Nebula art cushion covers I made for eHow

Hello? Is anyone still out there? Of course not — who am I kidding? After an absence as long as this, I’d be silly to think that my two readers would still be checking my little site for updates.

But I’m brushing away the cobwebs and revving up my DIY engines again because I have actually left my 9-to-5 office gig as a website content manager (complete with a lousy 3-hour roundtrip commute in L.A. traffic) for my dream job — working 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. And I, the incurable homebody, get to do it all from HOME SWEET HOME. (Check out my contributor page.) Pinch me. Seriously.

I’ll try to update my blog whenever a new video/article gets published to eHow, plus give you some additional helpful tips on the craft projects and recipes.

And there’s no better time than the present, so let’s start!

Check out one of the first videos I created for eHow: DIY galaxy-themed cushion covers. Click here for the full tutorial.

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 galactic route. (See what I did there with that infamous split-infinitive Star Trek reference?)

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.