The first thing I ever made was a set of wall panels out of an old TV box, and they looked fine for about two days, and then the paint dried properly and you could see every single ridge of the corrugation pushing up through the white like a washboard. From across the room, it […]

My first planter came out of the mold looking almost right, and then I turned it over, and there was a lump of gravel sitting in the wall of it the size of a grape, and about a week later the whole rim broke off in my hand while I was carrying it to the […]

The first curtains I made were four yards of quilting cotton with a print I’d been staring at for about twenty minutes in the shop. They went up on the rod and immediately hung there like two tea towels, with no weight at all, and by six the next morning the light was coming through […]

I’ve made seventeen things out of clay since last spring, and about nine of them live in a cupboard now. The ones still out in the house all have one thing in common, which took me embarrassingly long to notice. They hold something: keys, rings, a tea light, a fistful of dried grass. Purely decorative […]

The first plant hanger I tied looked right for about five weeks. Then the pot sat a little lower than it had on day one, lower again after the next watering, and by the end of the summer the whole thing hung at a tilt with the ceiling hook doing most of the work. Nothing […]

Half the DIY paper flower wall decor tutorials are just party backdrops in disguise, and a party backdrop only has to survive one afternoon and a few hundred phone photos. Put those same flowers on a bedroom wall and around week three the big outer petals start folding forward like they’re tired, one or two […]

Most DIY candle holder ideas look finished in the photo because the photo was taken before anyone struck a match. Light it, give it two evenings, and you’ll find out which ones were built for Pinterest. The taper starts leaning. Twine near the rim turns a bit brown. Hot glue on a warm jar lets […]

The first easy DIY home decor projects I tried were the ones that look finished on a phone and half-done on a real wall. A wreath I never hung. A painted jar that looked like a school project. A floating shelf that sagged because I used the wrong plugs. What I wanted was simpler: beginner […]

My sister sat on mine at a birthday thing last month, and her knees came up level with her chest, and she gave me a look I’m still thinking about. The mushroom stool had been sitting in the corner of the living room for about three weeks by then. Cream bouclé cap, short pale stem, […]