After North Carolina’s recent Snowpocalypse, we know you're ready to warm up! We can help get things started with our fiery DIY visuals for our Burning Down the Warehouse Sale, going on now through February 22, 2014 at Peachy Keen. With 20% off STORE-WIDE and up to 80% off sale, you can go nuts! Featuring $25, $50, and $75 racks, a 50% off rack, and plenty of sale shoes - some are as low as $20! We wanted to do our amazing sale justice, so we headed to Pinterest for inspiration. As a result, we have decorated the store with phoenixes, burning buildings, and suns to help get us in the right frame of mind. These visuals are easy to do yourself, and don’t require much money or supplies!

We chose a palette of red, orange, yellow, and gold, so we could keep the store feeling warm and sunny!

DIY Origami Phoenixes
Phoenixes are symbols of renewal, being reborn out of their own ashes after bursting into flames. We knew phoenixes were the perfect place to start! All you need is square origami paper.

Origami tip: Making these is a bit easier if your origami paper is different on each side! (Also, if your paper is to thick - think card stock - or too flimsy - think construction paper - your origami will not turn out the way you want! Trust me peaches, it’s a major Pinterest fail.) First, fold the origami paper in half from corner-to-corner (both ways!) and then side to side (again, both ways!). Then fold in the sides like you see in the picture below. Fold in the corners on both sides, resulting in a kite shape Unfold the folds you just made and bring the point upwards. This is probably the hardest part. You’ll end up with a diamond shape with a slight gap down the middle. Repeat this step on the other side so the whole thing is a diamond, like this: Turn the diamond sideways - so the edge faces you. Pull the two edges apart and fold the front and back in half so they are folded in on themselves. The result will be another diamond shape, like the one below (the slit is important!): Fold up the diamond on both sides, to cover the slit. Pull the inner triangles (on either side of that slit) out to the sides. These will become the tail and neck of the bird, while the big triangles will be the wings. Pick one of these to make the head and fold the tip inwards so you invert it. This is a little tricky. Your origami phoenix is now finished! If you like, use a pen to help curl the wings out from the body. As you can see, we used these lovely birds all over the store, many with fiery tails! They can be placed on tables and counter tops or hung from the ceiling. To hang the phoenixes, use a hole puncher on the body (and the base of the tail if it needs more support), then string fishing line through. Tie the fishing line in a loop to hang the birds from hooks. They can also be taped to mirrors and windows, as well as on top of computer monitors or TVs.

DIY Suns
A big part of visual merchandising for our boutique is being thrifty and making use of supplies we already have, we made these suns with records from Casino Peachy Keen. You can also make them using mirrors, or by covering paper plates, basically anything circular and flat will work!

First, we spray painted wooden skewers gold. You can pick any sunny color you like. Between paint coats we covered the records in paper. Once the skewers were dried, we cut some of them to shorter lengths and hot glued them to the back of the records, so they would look like sun rays. You can also use wooden chopsticks, or pick up some dowels at the hardware store – it all depends on how big your suns are! Crafting tip: you may need to secure some of your sun rays with tape, after gluing to give the hot glue an extra hand.

Beat those winter blues and get crafty to bring some warmth into your home! Come into Peachy Keen to see our Burning Down the Warehouse visuals in person. Once you go home you won’t be able to help breaking out the scissors and glue and getting creative!