Still more weekend to go

Apartment Therapy LA took a trip to Ikea and posted some really cute items on flickr. Check it out, and their first hand experiences and opinions at the store.

I've been crafty this weekend between playing bocce ball for the first time, hiking, rock climbing (with gear and all) for the first time, a quick but scary trip to the emergency room with Hi-C who is having a weird allergic reaction to something, and then tonight, my friend Andrea's gallery opening.

As you can see in the picture above, Andrea's work is delicately layered, sensitive, and colorful. Gorgeous!

So amidst the chaos, I had a bit of time to make some pillows. Pillows are a great way to change the mood of a room without purchasing new furniture.
Here are some hints for quick and painless decorative pillows:
1) Generally fiber fill (the plastic bags of stuffing) are cheaper than pillow forms (also known as pillow inserts). Most often, however, people under fill their pillows with fiber fill and they end up looking cheap, flimsy, and obviously homemade. Homemade isn't bad, but you want a good looking pillow to invite a resting head or little cuddle. Fill'er up! Don't be afraid! Stuff it to the gills! You get the point.

2) Fiber fill can be clumpy and bulgey looking. Two options to prevent cottage cheese inspired pillows are to:
a) use a cheap material like muslin to make the fiber fill into an insert. You will still spend less than $4 on an insert by
making your own.
b) Pull the fill apart, don't put it in your pillow in big clumps. Pull and pull and pull until you have a big white cloud of polyester cotton candy all over your floor, but keep the cats out.
3) If you don't make your own insert, go ahead and stitch the pillow all the way around. A zipper invites curious minds to unzip (I think this is a habit left over from childhood books that teach activities like tying, zipping, and buttoning.) An unzipped pillow with loose fill seems like a dangerously messy situation.

But definitely get creative and decorate your pillow with fun forms on one side and a rather plain side on the back. That way you can still use the pillow to rest your head without the lumps that often accompany appliqued forms.