My living room has dark paneled walls.  I really like the walls, but it is hard for me to figure out what to hang in there with all of the raised molding and dark color.  I decided I needed a large piece of art for one wall, and I wanted something simple and colorful.  I created a piece of art using overlapping circles.  I am really into the red/orange combination right now, so I decided on that for my color palette.

I began with a blank canvas.  I used modge podge to adhere torn pieces of book paper to the canvas.

When I was through with that step, I decided it looked a little weird and didn’t think I would like the finished product.  So I used all of the red tissue paper I had, ran out of that, and used some white as well.  I just adhered the tissue in large sections using the modge podge, but kept it kind of crumpled.  Then I painted over it with red acrylic paint that I mixed with liquitex gloss medium and varnish.  If you look close you can see the different colors of tissue. 

After that was dry, I used a paper plate to lightly pencil in circles on the canvas.  The hardest part was figuring out where to start tracing and keeping the pattern uniform.  I covered the canvas with overlapping circles.

I painted over the pencil marks with white acrylic paint.

I then filled in the overlapping parts with orange, and painted yellow dots in the intersection points.

After everything dried well, I sanded down sections of the canvas randomly, then applied some thinned down brown acrylic paint to the entire piece to give it an aged look.  After that was dry I applied a thin coat of liquitex gloss medium and varnish over the entire piece.  Here is a close-up of the distressed finish.

I had it framed at Michaels and hung it over a small table in my living room.  I am really happy with how it turned out!

We were having serious organization problems with my daughter’s accessories.  We had bows, headbands, and jewelry everywhere!  She had one small bow holder hanging on the wall in her closet, but is was nowhere near big enough to hold all of her hair bows.  Her headbands were crammed into a drawer in my bathroom (not good) and the ones with flowers kept getting smashed.  Necklaces were everywhere…..it was time to get organized.

During my time off over the Christmas break, I bought some shutters to mount to the wall in her bedroom.  I started by washing them off well using our garden hose, and then letting them dry in the sun.

Then I took them up to her room and decided where I wanted to hang them.  I then laid them out on the floor in her room to get to work!  I attached bar type cabinet pulls, upside down bin pulls, and lots of hooks.  I love my husband’s cordless drill.

After I had all of the hardware installed, I drilled holes through the shutters where I wanted to attach them to the wall.  I used drywall anchors behind the shutters, and installed screws through the holes I had previously drilled in the shutters to mount them to the wall.  Here is a picture of them after they were hung.

I also painted a small wooden plaque that I had picked up at Michaels with my daughter’s name.  She is really obsessed with writing her name using curly-q’s right now, so I picked a curly font on my computer, and used my Silhouette to cut out her name the size I wanted for the plaque.  I ended up tracing her name and painting it with a paint brush because I was too impatient to wait for the paint to dry and use a stencil.  It worked out just fine.  I then attached five lengths of ribbon to the back of the plaque using a staple gun, and also attached a sawtooth hanger to hang it from the wall.  I think it turned out cute and holds a lot more hair bows than the one she had before.

Here is a close up view of the shutters.  I purchased small s-hooks at Home Depot to hang from the shutter slats.  She will be able to hang tons of jewelry on this!  I put her nicer necklaces up high enough that she can’t reach them easily (we’ll see how that goes….).  I used the bar type cabinet pulls to hang her headbands from, and used some of the larger hooks for scarves. The upside down bin pulls are great for earrings.

Here is Violet checking out her new room organization.  She really liked it!  She’s been wearing a different necklace every day since we got her things out where she can see them.

Photos were processed using the Jubilee Simple Action from the wonderful Paint the Moon.

I made some photo coasters last night for my father in law.  I’ve made larger photo tiles before, but never coasters.  I really like how they turned out, and I definitely thought about keeping them for myself and finding something for him on Amazon…..

I didn’t take any pictures early on in the process, but it’s really pretty simple.  I found four photos of my kids that I liked.  Using Photoshop, I cropped them to 3.75 inches square so that they would fit nicely on my 4 inch square tiles.  Any tile from the hardware store will work.  I made each photo sepia toned using the Beautiful Sepia action from Colorful Actions by Mindy.  I also put a negative frame around each by House of 3.  After I had the photos looking like I wanted, I printed them on my home printer and cut them to 3.75 inches square.  That was the hardest part – for some reason it always takes me forever to choose photos…

Next I applied a thin layer of modge podge to the top of the tile, and adhered the picture to the tile.  Then I put modge podge on top of the photo, making sure to really coat the edges.  I used a disposable foam brush, and tried to keep my brush strokes all running horizontally across the coaster.  You will see brush strokes with modge podge, so don’t worry about it, just try to keep them linear.  Or you can run the strokes in both directions for a canvas-like look.

After that coat dried, I applied another coat of modge podge.  I was impatient, so I used a hair dryer to speed along the drying process.  I cut squares of black felt to put on the bottom of each coaster so that they wouldn’t scratch the table.  To adhere them, I sprayed the felt square with spray glue and then placed the tile on top of it.  Finally, I finished the whole process with two coats of spray sealer on the top of the coasters.  I’m sure any brand would work.  I used Americana gloss spray sealer – I just looked for one that said it would resist water.  Time will tell if it works…hope so, since it’s a gift!

during the spray sealing process

Here is a close-up of each finished coaster.  Such cute little kiddos, aren’t they?

And now, are you ready for the cuteness corniness?  My father in law is really going to make fun of me for this.

the back of the tag

I know, I know.  So incredibly cheesy.  For the tag, I used a plain manila tag, inked the edges, stamped with a background text stamp, and ran it through my printer for the main text.  I used some cute ribbon and bakers twine to finish off the gift.  I like that the colors aren’t too feminine since it is for Father’s Day.  I sure hope Grandpa likes them!  If he doesn’t, at least I know Nana will. 

Happy Father's Day!

One night while watching Beauty and the Beast with my 4 year old for the 25th time, I decided I needed a project to keep me busy during the show.  I had been meaning to try to cover these plain push pins to make them a bit more interesting so thought I would paint them and see how they turned out.  It was either that or online shopping, and that can get a bit hard on the budget.  I took a box of regular push pins, acrylic paints, glossy varnish, and a foam brush and set to task.

Using an old checkbook box, I pushed the pins into it to have something to hold them, then painted them in the different colors I had chosen: red, orange, and yellow.  It took a couple of coats of the paint to get them covered well and not have the paint appear see-through.  Then I painted them lightly with the varnish as a sealer.  And voila, done!  Much cuter in my craft room than the plain version I think.

Our Mom decided to update the art in her dining room.  In case you don’t know, our Mom is awesome.  She found some fabric she really liked, and decided to use it as an inspiration for wall art.

She already had 2 pieces of art that she was ready to change.  She took the existing art and removed it from the frames.

She then took the dark brown boards that were part of the existing art, and painted them with gesso.  After the gesso was dry, she painted them using acrylic paint in an off white color.

When that coat was dry, she dry brushed with varying shades of brown, bronze and gold acrylic paint to achieve a textured look.  She then sketched her design in pencil keeping her scale the same as her inspiration fabric.  At that point, she was ready to paint her design.  She used acrylic paints in varying colors.

When the design was complete and dry, she sealed the art with satin finish brush-on varnish .  Here is the finished art hanging in the dining room.  I think it looks fabulous on the brown walls!

Didn’t I tell you our Mom is awesome?  Now you know!

We decided it wold be fun to make paint chip mosaic’s.  We’ve seen lots of these around the web, and one of our favorites was from Hope Studios.

Supply list:

• mdf board cut to desired size (ours was about 24″x26″) – try to estimate the size of your board based on how many paint chips you want to use and their size so that you won’t have to cut any of them
• spray paint
• modge podge
• lots and lots of paint chips
• stain (optional)
• sealer (brush on varnish or clear acrylic spray sealer)
• foam brushes

We started with mdf board.  We each decided to make 2 boards, and we were able to get all 4 pieces cut, plus we had some extra left over.  We had the home improvement store cut it to the desired size.  Two benefits to this – I didn’t have to try to FIND my husband’s table saw in our very scary garage, AND it fit in my little Honda once it was cut.  We spray painted around the back edge, the sides, and the entire front of the board.  Heather used red paint and I used brown.  We debated only spraying the border part that would show in the front, but decided that if we didn’t get the paint chips lined up exactly right, we didn’t want the raw mdf to show through.  Glad we did that, because mine definitely had some spots showing through.  I’m learning to plan for my imperfection.

After the paint was dry, we used a pencil to lightly draw in quadrants on the board (draw a line down the middle each direction so that you have four sections).  We then laid the paint chips out to figure out a pattern we liked.  Then the time consuming part began!  We used modge podge to glue down the paint chips, working our way out from the center in each of the four quadrants.  This took a long time, and the paint chips tried to curl up.  It helped to use a weight on top of the adhered chips to help keep them down while the modge podge dried.  Use whatever you have – we used an acrylic shoe box filled with bottles of paint sitting on top of a large cookie sheet.  Be careful not to glue your weight to the paint chips….

We let this completely dry.  Then we added additional coats of modge podge on top.  I’d recommend at least 2 coats.  At this point, I stained over mine to add a little depth.  Finally, after everything is good and dry, apply a sealer on top.  You can use whatever you have.  We used a brush-on varnish, but a clear acrylic spray sealer would also work.

Fo some reason, the varnish I used caused my stain to streak, which made me so sad……  I still like the end product hanging in my room, though, and TRY not to look at that one spot that drives me crazy…

We got heavy duty hangers that screwed into the back of the board in 2 places to hang these, then used 2 drywall picture hangers in the wall.  I wasn’t sure what to use since these are very heavy.  Since I hung them over my bed, I didn’t want them to fall on our heads.  I talked to someone in the framing section at Michael’s, and went with her recommendation.

Here is end result.  I really like how they turned out.  It gives a much needed punch of color over my bed.  Now, I need curtains…

Another project that we tried during our weekend of fun with the girls was this painting.  We had actually gotten the supplies for this one months ago after reading about this project on How About Orange, and had just not made the time to do it.  What better time to get out some happy paint colors than a girl’s weekend?

Supply list:

canvas in desired size

acrylic paints

foam brushes

design of your choice printed out on plain paper

transfer paper

acrylic pen

wood stain (we used walnut color)

exterior/interior varnish

Start with a blank canvas and using the foam brush, paint it with the acrylic paints in the colors of your choice.  I chose brighter colors to match my crafting room, while Shannon used darker and deeper colors to match the living spaces in her home.  Paint the stripes on the canvases, blending the colors a bit, and let them dry.

Shannon did also sand hers down quite a bit so that the under color came through some, and this really looked nice, so I would recommend it.

I had worried about covering the red on mine, so did not paint the base layer as she did, and this, my friends, was a mistake, as I had a lot harder time making the edge of my stripes look even, so do not make my mistake – paint the base coat first!  :)  Once the paint dries, the fun starts, using your design and transfer paper, trace the design onto your canvas, though try not to press too much as I did get some extra graphite on my canvas.  Use your paint pen to color in your design.  When dry, stain them, wiping most of the stain off immediately after it is evenly applied.  Then after that dries, apply a coat of varnish for protection.  I think they turned out pretty well, what do you think?