So, I’ve had a crazy thought in my head for a few months now and I’ve decided: you either do it now or you never do it all.

I was inspired by this project I saw upcycling paint chips into portraits.     Click on the link to see what I mean.

The process of making a portrait out of paint chips is, to say the least, exhausting.    Patience is key and you sorta have to wing it, guess, and hope for the best.   

I was thinking there has to be an easier way to use technology to guide you along the way.    And there is: a computer program that helps mosaic tile installers take any photo and pixalate them to exact sized squares of colored tile.     In this case, instead of tile, I opted for paint chips.

Can you guess who these celebrity portraits might be?

Taking a stab at this project and will hopefully find an easy, painless and not-so-mind-numbing way to do this.    If it works, you’ll see it in my future book I’m writing about Upcycling.  

Oh boy, look what the Fedex man dragged to my front door: a DVD copy of my 1997 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.  In light of her announcement that she’s ending her show with the 25th season, I thought how fitting to share this.

This week at Daily Danny seems to be a video montage week, first with the Method parody commercial of Scrubbing Bubbles, and now a blast from the past: my 19-year-old self on Oprah when she launched Oprah’s Angel Network.

12 years ago, I appeared on Oprah to share how I raised $30,000 in less than 30 days to sponsor the Baltimore Habitat for Humanity Oprah House.    I was given a challenge from a producer at the show: raise $30,000, don’t mention the name “Oprah” when fund-raising, and then come on the show to explain how you did it so others watching might be able to do the same thing.

I haven’t seen this video in over a decade and a lot things come to mind.  But I thought it would be something fun to share with you so you can see my teenage self was trying to save the world even way back then. 

Enjoy!

Going through my files, I realized I took a lot of photos of Kerry Washington’s Los Angeles apartment makeover I did for the June issue of O: the Oprah Magazine.   I did this makeover so long ago, that I forgot about half of the DIY decorating ideas.  So, here’s the third and final post on the makeover and this one will be dedicated to the decorating details.

First up, is this fun Linden Street lamp I purchased from JCPenney.    What I like about this apothecary style lamp is that you can customize the inside of the lamp with whatever collection you like.    Lots of people fill it with shells or pebbles, but I thought light seaglass was the way to go here.   On the bottom, I put some white sand and just layered recycled glass chips on top.  The seagrass shade added to the “beachy” theme. 

Inside the medicine cabinet, I took some chipped teacups and used them as storage holders for small, everyday items.   There’s no need to run to the store and buy new cups when you can find a whole collection of great items at stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army for next to nothing.   True story: I have a celebrity client (not Kerry Washington) who did not want me to buy her things from the thrift shops, even though that’s where I would find the best vintage glass and ceramic pieces.   So, I would shop Salvation Army and then package the finds in a large Anthropologie shopping bag and tell her they were vintage pieces from Anthropologie.  She loved them.   Thought that was funny….

Here, a JCPenney bookcase was filled with a collection of books.   I know there’s some controversy to this idea, but I’ll say it anyway: I arranged the books by color.   Purple/Blue, Black, Reds and White (not pictured) on the bottom.    It keeps it interesting and makes a statement.   For all you booklovers out there, you can hate me.  It’s ok.

I still love this idea even though it didn’t make the cut in the pages of O Magazine.  I took a simple JCpenney Home Collection pillow and sequined it with steel and brass safety pins.  Just pin away and create a starburst.   It doesn’t poke you (hello, the word is “safety” pin) and it’s just different.    I had fun making it and thought it was a cute idea that only cost $2.

Finally, I covered an entire wall in cork and then pinned a large sheet of unbleached painter’s canvas tarp on top.    Here, it makes for a functional and revolving wall of inspiration photos, cards, notes, memos and—-my favorite—jewelry.   Just pin all your jewelry up and you can see your whole collection instead of keeping it stashed away in drawers.

And here’s a pic of the whole wall.    It’s fun!

Part Two of the eco makeover I did for the June issue of O: The Oprah Magazine!    This is so much fun going back into my digital archives to finally share these pics with all of you!

Okay, here’s the patio area that is, well, just a chair and a broomstick before I got my hands on it.  And here’s the after:

I moved the teak chair Kerry Washington already had to across the other side of the patio.  Here, I put this all-weather wicker chair (in a nice blue color) on top of a natural reed runner.    Behind it, I took the top half of a dining room hutch from Smith & Hawken and used it as shelves because it fit RIGHT IN the space on the patio.    When I saw it on clearance, I knew it was the perfect and inexpensive piece for the job.  On top of the shelves, I took these amazing Linden Street lanterns from JCpenney and made them the hero accessory for the area.    To finish it, I took a JCPenney Home Collection pillow and “sequined” it with just safety pins for a starburst effect.

Here’s the dining room before.   The chairs were clunky and they came with the apartment, so Kerry was not attached to them at all.   And that was it.    Above it was some track lighting that sorta lit the area and there was no real effort to make it a stylish, cool, beautiful area to entertain.

And here’s the after!    I mixed and matched here quite a bit.  The rug is a real find from HD Buttercup in Los Angeles and it’s remnant carpet all stitched together into a vintage, patchwork piece.     The chairs were clearance “driftwood” pieces from Pottery Barn that I mixed with a Linden Street table from JCPenney; there are pieces costing thousands of dollars that look exactly like this JCPenney one that cost just a few hundred.  It pays to shop, seriously.    And we painted the walls a cool lime color using that same Benjamin Moore Natura eco paint.  Looks vibrant and fresh!

And here’s the $15 chandelier I created to replace the tacky track lighting.  I took a $9.99 paper lighting fixture from Ikea and ripped off the paper to leave the exposed wire ribs.   Then I wrapped it all with chicken wire from Lowe’s, added some branches and a few craft store birds from Michael’s craft store.    I chose interesting bulbs (since it’s exposed) and voila!   Birdcage chandelier.     It was inspired by a $2000 version I saw in an antique store and thought… “I could make that.”

Here’s the before shot of the living room:  mirrored walls, mismatched rental apartment furniture, assortment of unmatched accessories.   It was comfortable, but not homey.

And the after photo of the living room.  We solved the mirror wall problem by installing yards of Rubie Green organic cotton fabric onto hospital tracking.    We found another patchwork rug that matched the one in the dining room and picked a neutral sofa from JCPenney’s Linden Street collection and threw on some recycled burlap pillows and antique store pieces, too.   The table is from Baker Furniture (an investment piece!) and a casual wicker chair from Smith & Hawken finished it off.   The lamp is cool, too; it’s from HD Buttercup and it’s an old medical floor lamp remade into a great floor lamp for the home. 

All fun stuff for a cool modern country apartment…right in the Hollywood Hills.   Check it all out in the June issue of O: The Oprah Magazine!

Coming out on newsstands any day now is the June issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, which features the lovely Oprah Winfrey on the cover with a whole gang of adoptable dogs from the PAWS shelter in Chicago.

Also inside the issue is a great eco-home makeover story I did for the magazine on actress Kerry Washington’s Los Angeles apartment.    I actually did this green home makeover–the kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom and home office—many months ago.    But with the lead time with magazines, it’s just coming out now and I promised to keep it mum until it hit newsstands.

But instead of scanning the magazine pages and sharing them with you, I do encourage you to pick up the issue to see the amazing before and after photos, great resources and tips and sidebars we created on going green when you renovate.     That said, I have some digital shots I’d like to share with you and I decided to break it up into a two part series.

First before photo is the functional, but not so great looking, dog steps that were already in the apartment when I started.  Instead of tossing them and starting fresh, I decided to hit the Los Angeles flea markets one Saturday and see if I could find some interesting and colorful fabric to cover them with.

And here’s the after.   A bright Peruvian vintage rug was just the right size to give the stairs some color and texture.    “Pet” furniture doesn’t have to be ugly; it can totally be functional and beautiful, too.  All you need is a $15 flea market find and a staple gun to re-create this handmade project.

Here’s a before shot of the bedroom.   It worked, yes.   But it lacked,well, being a bedroom.    Kerry did sleep on my Simmons Natural Care by Danny Seo mattress (and I was beyond thrilled they credited it so in the magazine, even though it’s a covered bed in the final shot), but the room needed more green improvements, storage, lighting and a good, solid bed.

And here’s the after.   We found a wonderful bed from Mitchell Gold that featured soy-base foam in the batting in the headboard (nice complement since the mattress also has soy-based foam!).    The bedding is predominantly from JCpenney’s Simply Green initiative (love the organic cotton coverlet) and the new carpeting is recycled nylon carpet called “Holland Park” from Shaw Flooring.   The double wall cabinets are also from JCPenney and I have them in my own house; at just $399 each, they are solidly built and have plenty of storage.    Aren’t they great?   I also painted the walls in a bright, blue color using Benjamin Moore Natura paint, which is a new line of paints they have that are zero-VOC, meaning they do not off-gas when you paint with them.   Bright, beautiful colors!

And here’s a kitchen that BADLY needed a makeover.    As much as I wanted to salvage the cabinets, I just couldn’t.   But luckily, someone on the construction crew asked me if they could have them, and I gladly said YES!    I guess it’s true: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.    So, the cabinets got recycled and the old fridge and appliances also did, too.    We replaced everything with new Kraftmaid cabinets from Lowe’s and energy efficient appliances from Electrolux.  Now, here’s the after shot:

I call this a modern country kitchen.   We have real poppy flowers pressed into resin for the back wall from 3-Form.  The floor is kitchen tile from Shaw that I have in my own kitchen at home; it’s designed to look like wood graining. The open cabinets are important to me, so you can see your own dishes, cups and collections in your kitchen; it also keeps it feeling airy.   And the cool faucet?  It’s the Karbon faucet from Kohler; it can bend, twist and adjust to a million different positions and it’s just the most amazing faucet.  I just ordered one for my guest cottage after installing it here.

Tomorrow, come back for more pics: a new dining room before and after (including a bird cage chandelier project made for a few dollars), a patio makeover in the Hollywood hills, and a living room that uses organic cotton to hide an ugly mirrored wall.