

I know that during this quarantine phase, everyone has taken on a love for at-home DIY project––including me and my husband. We first started with our patio and now our family room. We got it painted last year and to be honest, I don't know what I was thinking when I had my accent wall painted blue. Well, I take that back, I do know what I was thinking.
I was trying to bring the "beach" to my home by having my accent wall blue (like the sea), the outside walls grey, and my kitchen beige (the sand). But after some time passed, I wasn't fond of the idea. Plus, my husband started working on the floor and never finished. Hey, I give him his props he did start, but the floor hasn't been finished... and it's been a year!
With that in mind, I put on my creative cap and got to work on giving my living room a total makeover.
This was my step-by-step process on elevating my home with a DIY accent wall:
Here's what you'll need:
- 1-gallon white paint
- 2 thick paint brushes
- 2 large paint rollers
- 2 small paint rollers
- 1 steady hand
- 2-3 rolls of frog painters tape (Lowes guy said it works better than the blue tape)
- 3 paint buckets
- A couple of old blankets to cover the floor
- 1 ladder
- 1 measuring device
- 1 pencil
Being home, I was able to allow my creative juices to flow thinking of how I wanted to change my family room. I wanted to keep the grey theme and didn't want to do a lot of work, if you know what I mean. So I started looking up different ideas for accent walls. I did toy with the idea of wallpaper but my husband wasn't down with that plan. I also was thinking about painting it just one solid grey color, but that would be too plain for the vibe I was going for.
I took to Pinterest and saw a chevron print and fell in love. Y'all, I looked high and low for a chevron print stencil and I've seen others do their walls with a stencil, but I couldn't find one large enough. The small ones would have taken days maybe even weeks to finish. My husband is an Architect Designer, so I asked him if he thought he would be able to do it with tape and he was like, "Oh yeah, I can do that!"
Step Two: Painting
We first had to paint the wall white. Thank God for my husband because I was going to do it all backwards. I was going to tape it then paint it white, my husband informed me that if we did it that way, we would be painting for days and then it wouldn't have looked right.
Step Three: Taping
Next up is taping. I am going to be honest I didn't know that "math" was going to be involved. I seriously thought that all we had to do was put tape up in zigzags. Again I thank God for my husband who brought me back to reality real quick.
You need to measure your wall from top-to-bottom and side-to-side. It's important for you to have in mind how many patterns you want. I wanted six in total. So my husband measured and taped the wall according to his measurements. Keep in mind that everyone's measurements will be different because it's according to your wall size.
Now here is where the math comes into place again. To get the chevron print, you have to place the tape on the wall in a zigzag shape. My husband measured for each zigzag to be two-feet apart. And you follow this throughout the entire wall following the taped-off sections, moving from top to bottom.
Step Four: Fill In The Blanks
Now, this is where the fun and intense part starts! You need to have your two colors picked out. I chose a light grey and a darker grey. Go over with a pencil in each zigzag and write in the color you want to paint in each zag. Use your roller to paint the color in each section. To make it easier, my husband had one color and I had another, that way we didn't get it mixed up.
Be careful and don't go too fast you can mess up easily if you're not paying attention! After you have done this, let it dry for a little bit. Then, you carefully take the paint off and boom!
The Final Reveal
Can you say WOW? It doesn't even look like the same room. If you ask me, it looks like something out of the Southern Living Magazine! We did that!
Featured image by Tamron Little.
Tamron can be best described as a millennial southern lady lving her best life as a cancer survivor! Tamron inspires the everyday woman through faith, lifestyle, and her passion for fashion! Her goal is to encourage women through her testimony while sharing her light and life as a working mom, and wife.
Wife • Mom • Influencer
On her debut album,CTRL,SZA crooned about her desire to be a “Normal Girl.” Now, nearly eight years since its release, her Not Beauty line represents her commitment to existing outside of traditional beauty norms.
The singer whose real name is Solána Imani Rowe first teased the idea of a lip gloss line during Super Bowl LIX in February, noting that the release would be happening “very shortly.” Not Beauty debuted simultaneously with the Grand National Tour, which she co-headlines with Kendrick Lamar, in Minneapolis on April 19.
Each Not Beauty pop-up would offer fans the opportunity to purchase the glosses, learn more about the brand, and have the opportunity to meet the superstar in the flesh regardless of their ticket status.
During the Los Angeles tour stop, which spanned three dates on May 21, May 23, with the finale on May 24, xoNecole had the opportunity to test out the glosses included in this soft launch, as SZA revealed in a statement that "this is just the start of other lip products, including plans to launch stains, liners, and creams all inspired by SZA's “infamous layered lip combinations.”
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So, what is included in the first Not Beauty launch?
The current Not Beauty products available are lip glosses that come in three shades: In the Flesh, Strawberry Jelly, and Quartz.
During my visit to the first LA Not Beauty pop-up activation, I not only had the chance to purchase all three glosses but also took a peek inside the blow-up log tent. Inside, fans got to experience SZA’s love for nature and her fascination with bugs, which are prominently featured in her performances for this tour. At one point, she even had human preying mantis prancing across the stage y'all.
There were blow-up photos of the beauty that is SZA for fans (myself included) to take photos, but in wooden-like tree trunks were a deeper dive into some of the ingredients featured in her products and their benefits.
For example, the glosses feature Hi-Shine Lip Jelly and Shea Butter as key ingredients and some of the listed benefits included are:
- Shea Butter - “A powerhouse ingredient, offering both functional and nourishing benefits.”
- Hi-Shine Lip Jelly (featured in the In the Flesh shade) - “Formula glides on with perfect adhesion to the lips without stickiness).
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What are in the products?
Featured in an orange package, with images of a bug and flower on the side, the back of the box reads: “It’s NOT BEAUTY, it just works. Developed by Solána “SZA” Rowe.
As someone who never leaves home without a good lip gloss, I loved how compact the wood panel packaging is. Perfect to slip into my purse, or in the case of the show at SoFi Stadium, into my pocket when I’m not carrying a bag.
Because I’m a sucker for a good black and brown lip liner and clear gloss combo, I decided to wear the Quartz flavor on night one of the Grand National Tour LA stop, and it did not disappoint. I’ll admit, it’s light weight feel made me nervous because it felt like there was nothing on my lips. However, when I checked my lips in my compact mirror several times throughout the night, I was shocked to find that my gloss was still intact. I only reapplied once out of the habit of looking cute and applying my gloss, but not necessity.
Here are some of the ingredients featured, but not limited to, in the Quartz flavor.
- Polyisoubutene
- Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea)Butter
- Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil
- Mentha Piperita (Peppermint) Oil
- Tocopherol
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Lip prep
I’m a simple girl who loves to stay true to her roots. So ahead of the show, I stopped by a local Inglewood Beauty Supply store and grabbed a Black and Brown shade lip pencil for just under $2 a piece.
Shading the outline of my lips with the black pencil first, I used the brown to lightly fill the inside of my lips before applying my Quartz Not Beauty shade gloss.
How to apply
There’s truly no right or wrong way to apply lip gloss (in my opinion), with this being a brush applicator sort of product, I simply untwisted the top and swiped the gloss around my top and bottom lip generously.
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Results
Again, my Not Beauty Quartz product stayed on my lips from the start of the show, which began with a fire DJ set from LA’s very own, Mustard, to the conclusion when Kendrick and SZA reunited on stage to send us home to their duet, “luther,” featured on the rapper's GNX album.
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This Journaling Technique Is Designed To Help You Manifest the Life You Want
These days, journaling and I go together real bad. And while audio journaling will still be my go-to when I have to process something heavy, there’s another journaling technique that has quickly become a fave: best-case scenario journaling.
Like its name suggests, best-case scenario journaling is a form of journaling that asks you to focus on what you do want instead of what you don’t want, and by doing so, you set the tone for your day and lay fertile groundwork for manifestation. I first came across it while listening to an episode of She’s So Lucky (formerly Balanced Black Girl).
In the solo episode, host Les Alfred walked us through the practice that changed her life, and I must say, as a chronic overthinker and someone who tends to lead with her worries, especially as I process, best-case scenario journaling has opened me up in my life in ways I didn’t imagine.
It was author Joe Dispenza who once said, "Most people spend 70% of their life living in survival and living in stress, so they're always anticipating the worst-case scenario based on a past experience and they're literally, out of the infinite potentials in the quantum field, they're selecting the worst possible outcome and they're beginning to emotionally embrace it with fear." I don't know about you, but I've definitely been that person. Hell, I can still be that person. It's easy to spiral into what can go wrong in your life versus what could go right.
Joe has also said, "The best way to predict your future is to create it." And that is a sentiment that both Les and I can agree with. Because that is what best-case scenario journaling is about.
What Is Best-Case Scenario Journaling?
Now, instead of shutting down or crashing out when I’m overwhelmed or anxious, I choose not to feed the spiral. I let my desires script what’s possible instead. Not from fear, but from faith. The scenario where the story I pitched resonates with our readers. Where unexpected money finds its way to me. Where someone I’ve been thinking about calls. Where I feel completely at peace, exactly where I am, just as I am.
Best-case scenario journaling isn’t about ignoring the reality of your current circumstances; it’s more about calling in the most aligned version of your life through reallocating that energy into believing in a different story instead of the one shrouded in doubt, fear, survival, complaints, or disbelief. And more often than not, the energy I write in becomes the energy I attract. That’s when everything shifts.
So, how do you actually start this practice? Let's break it down.
How To Try Best-Case Scenario Journaling
As with any form of journaling, there's no one "right" way to go about it. This in part is what makes journaling such a gentle and intuitive practice. You can start with a simple prompt like, "What's the best possible version of the situation I am worried about?" Or even, "If all goes well today, what would my day look and feel like?" Allow yourself to lean into ease and expansion not by forcing positivity, but by rewiring your mind to imagine possibility. To believe in the other side of the coin when it comes to 50/50 chances.
In an interview with The Skinny Confidential podcast, Les Alfred shared how she incorporates best-case scenario journaling in her mornings:
"It's where I will write out either how I want the day to go, assuming all best-case scenarios, or if there's something that I'm worried about, that's stressing me out, that's on my mind, I will write out what I think the best-case scenario of that situation is. I'll do that in detail."
The She's So Lucky host continued, "Let's say I have a day where I'm doing a bunch of back to back podcast recordings and maybe I feel nervous about it, I will write out in detail exactly how I want it to go. Like, 'Me and this guest vibe so well, I get them to admit things they've never admitted on air before. The audience loves this episode. Like, I will write out what I want all of the outcomes to be for the day ahead." Her approach is a great reminder that abundant living lives in the details so script your days like you mean it.
Why Best-Case Scenario Journaling Works
There's something especially powerful about choosing to tell yourself a different story, regardless of your present circumstances, and your mind's default of filling any blanks with fear. Best-case scenario journaling gives the mind a new script, and as you intentionally focusing on what could go right, you're effectively doing the work to retrain your nervous system as well.
As a mindset shift, best-case scenario journaling allows you to build a new habit, one that feeds hope in your life more than trepidation. As a manifestation technique, it facilitates a shift in your frequency, one that allows you to better align with outcomes you actually want to attract.
As a grounding practice, it supports your mental health by acting as an anchor, one that gifts you with self-regulation, gratitude, and a deeper connection to your inner self. So at the end of the day, you're not just feeding your delulu, you're nurturing your well-being, your energy, and your ability to believe that there is always better because in life there's always more.
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