Homebody space geeks — is your sofa your universe? Design your own personal nebulae! (Image: Maya Marin | ehow)

IN THIS ARTICLE:
An apology, I quit my job to work from home!,
relaunching the blog, watch my first video tutorial
– galaxy cushion covers

First, an apology. I’ve been away for so long, it’s shameful. And that’s because I’ve been working full time with a 3-hour-plus daily commute — and that’s just exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Especially for someone who needs plenty of alone-at-home recharge time, which has been scarce.

So, I’m happy to announce that after much weighing out of the pros and cons, I have just left my office gig as content director of Cuteness.com to work from home as a full-time video producer and writer for the lovely folks at eHow. Yes, I am actually DIY-ing for my bread and butter now, and I, the incurable homebody, get to do it all from HOME SWEET HOME. (Check out my contributor page.) Pinch me. Seriously.

I’m currently in the process of remodeling and re-launching this blog with a whole new look and theme. It’s taking some careful consideration and I’m not sure how long that will take — so please bear with me. In the meantime…

Here’s one of the first videos I created for eHow: DIY galaxy cushion covers.

Click here for the full tutorial.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Deep purple or black cushion cover (get them here)
•  Plastic sheet (the same size as your cushion cover)
•  Bleach
•  Spray Bottle
•  Fabric paint in the following colors: black, white, purple, blue, and red (I used Tulip soft matte fabric paint in black, glacier white, grape, navy, and crimson)
• Craft sponges
• Artist paintbrush, size 1 or 2 (here’s a value pack of brushes)

Originally, this tutorial was going to include sewing the cushion cover as well, but as I’m the queen of shortcuts, I figured why bother? Instead, I bought these super affordable and really great quality covers on Amazon.

The video and tute came out great, but there are a couple of things I would have done differently — namely, the bleaching step. As you can see in the video, I was a little trigger happy, plus the nozzle should have been set to a more focused spray, so too many areas of the cushion lost its color (*womp womp wooomp*). I should have probably only squirted once, as my cover was only 12×12. Anyway, I filled in the over-bleached areas with purple paint, which I wouldn’t have had to do if I’d not given it that extra squirt. Ah well, they still turned out pretty well I think.

Also, instead of making a million tiny stars with the tip of a paintbrush, you can be bold and flick on some white paint using toothbrush bristles for a splatter effect, like this cute li’l boy is doing in this video. But, I didn’t “boldly go” that route. (See what I did there with that infamous split-infinitive?)

And here’s the image I used as my inspiration. It’s a galaxy cluster officially named Abel 2744, a.k.a. Pandora’s Cluster. Gorgeous, right?

The bleaching technique is the most widely used, but if you don’t want to mess around with nasty chlorine, there are other tutorials that give a bleach-free option. I for one liked the randomness of the bleach spots, which will guide the rest of your design. Kind of like the chaotic yet beautiful nature of the universe. Not sure if that analogy works, but I like the sound of it.