Book Pages + Clip Art + Thrift Store Frames

Remember that little preview I showed you of my pretty turquoise frame? I finally finished the project!!!

Here it is all finished and pretty. I spent months looking around for ornate frames at The Dollar Tree and thrift stores. I set a limit for myself (no more than $2 a frame), so it was quite a challenge. Surprisingly, ornate thrift store frames seem to be in the $4-6 price range. Anyways, after I found five 6 frames of various shapes/sizes/levels of ornate-ness, I spray painted them Krylon Ocean Breeze Blue. It turned out it was slightly more blue than teal, so I took a dry sponge brush and created a glazed sort of look with a darker teal color. It turned out exactly how I wanted!
Thrift stores are also a great place to find old encyclopedias! I like the ones with the yellowy sort of pages. I got one for 75 cents! Here is the part where I admit I didn't do this project alone. Gabe helped me cut out pages from the encyclopedia and tape them to regular old printer paper and run them through the printer. We printed stock images and clip art that I found onto the book pages.
It was a very easy and fun project...And yeah, it was actually Gabe who spray painted the frames *sheepish shrug*. I think it turned out splendidly! Maybe it will spur us on to get the rest of the living room finished.

Button Magnets & More Wall Art

Truth be told, I would have had a craft day whether it was a snowpocalpyse or not. Yesterday was fun and relaxing, but today I needed to do something! So I did two different projects. First up, we have button magnets! This is hands down THE easiest DIY project ever. Supplies needed: variety of buttons and magnets. I got the adhesive backed magnets, but you could get just *magnets* and hot glue them to the buttons.

Seriously, that's all there is too it. Before, we had ridiculous Elvis magnets. Yeah, it was fun to change his little outfits, but our fridge looked hideous.
And now it's darling! Eventually, I would like to make more with different colors. But for now this will do.
The second project is a "why buy that when i can make it" project. I saw this cool felt wall decor on etsy. For my version, I used an old shirt and some thick white fabric that my grandma gave me. This project is also pretty easy, but it is tedious. First, I stretched the shirt over an embroidery hoop.
Next, I made 5 medium sized flowers and 3 big flowers out of the white fabric. This is the time consuming part because I had to trace each petal and cut them all out, then glue the bottom of each petal, THEN glue them all together. Probably 50% of the glue ended up on my fingers.
Lastly, I arranged the flowers in a cascade over one side of the hoop and hot glued them down.
It matches my bathroom perfectly! So I hung it above the towel rack. Ét, voila! C'est tres mignon, n'est pas?

Easy Wall Art

I have been making weekly trips to Hobby Lobby in the hopes that canvas will be on sale. Even though canvasses haven't been on sale, I haven't had any trouble finding other things to buy at Hobby Lobby. I digress, though. On a "just looking" trip to Big Lots, I stumbled on a set of TWO canvasses for $6!!! I bought them so I could finally reproduce a project I had seen on Blue Cricket Design. I decided to use gray and yellow (my favorite color duo) to match our bedroom and hang them above our bed. Don't mind the crappy pictures, they were taken on my new phone.

You can see the tutorial and the original art here.

Monogrammed Wreath

I love having days off! Lately, I've been reading on my days off rather than cleaning or cooking or being any sort of useful. Sometimes I like to go to craftgawker to get inspiration when I'm just lounging around in my free time. Last night's post-work craftgawker browsing yielded so many potential projects, my bookmark bar is exploding with crafty goodness! I stumbled upon a lot of craft blogs I had never seen before and found a good three or four projects I wanted to try. So today, I went thrifting and Hobby Lobbying with my mom and sister. Joey and I went ahead and did a monogrammed wreath project I saw on The Diary of Dave's Wife. If you want to create your own, you'll need:

1) a picture frame

2) 2-3 pieces of coordinating scrap book (or Stampin' Up!) paper

3) mod podge, craft glue, and hot glue gun

4) some cute brads

5) acrylic paint

6) a wooden, metal, or paper letter found at Hobby Lobby or Michael's

First, we painted our frames and our letters. Joey painted hers the same color. I originally did the same, but ended up painting my "L" black and my frame yellow.

While all this was drying, we moved on to the paper portion. We used mod podge to adhere paper to the frame's backing. We also used to other coordinating pieces of paper to cut out 3" circles. The circles are made into little medallions. For each medallion, we used 4 circles and a brad.
Joey did all the cutting! Then we folded the circles twice to make triangles. These we glued to a 3" circle that we cut out of scrap paper. In the center, we glued a flower and pushed the brad through the center.
Lastly, we used hot glue to attach the medallions to the frame. I love how Joey's turned out. She did a great job!
And here is mine. We still need to buy ribbon so we can hang them on our doors. But I can only handle so much in one day. I can't wait to finish them though and hang them on our doors!