Inexpensive Wall Art

I am attempting to decorate my first "adult" apartment. I use the word adult because my college apartment consisted of zero decorations and random furniture. The hardest part of decorating is how much it cost to get your place looking the way you like is always out of the budget you have. One of the most expensive things I have found is wall art and frames. I have so much wall space and a very little budget to spend on wall space.

I decided to get crafty. I have shown the piece I found from GoodWill that I love and now I want to show a piece that I made from items bought at Hobby Lobby.

I started with this unfinished wooden 8"x10". The frame cost under $5.

I also bought a pack of throw away foam paint brushes (.99 cents for a pack of two).

Mod Podge is one of the world's best inventions. I personally thing that $6.99 for a bottle is a bit expensive but hey it last you for a few projects. I also purchased two yellow patterened scrapbook pages for .50 cents each. I started ripping the scrapbook paper into small pieces.

I would dip the pieces of scrapbook paper in mod podge and then place it on the frame. After all the pieces were on the frame and dry I then painted another coat of mod podge on top of the paper. 

This is the finished frame drying. Althought the babies with wings are cute...I knew I wanted something different inside the frame and I wanted something artistic. I got the idea from a blog I recently started following.... http://illgetyoumypretties.blogspot.com/ She had a great idea to make easy subway art (which is all the rage these days. So I searched for a quote from Jimmy Buffett (my boyfriend's hero) and copied it into word. After the quote was in word I worked with it until I got the font looking the way I wanted and the organization looking the way I liked it.

Here is the finished product. The quote reads, "I just want to live happily ever after, every once in awhile"-Jimmy Buffett. The quote is supposed to look like an eye chart. I didn't like the sides being unfinished wood so I painted the sides black (if I had to do it over again I would have painted the whole frame black before applying the scrapbook pieces). The whole frame cost me less than $10 and is a great pop of color in my bedroom.

Turning old furniture into new furniture

My Mom was kind enough to give me her 1981 furniture. While I appreciated the gesture the furniture was really hideous.... I'm sad to say that I don't have the before picture (I really need to get better at that). Anyways I've heard that re-doing furniture was a difficult task but I knew I couldn't use the furniture in all its 81 glory. So I figured out the key to making this task easy is a hand held power sander. I was lucky enough that my Dad had one in his vast amount of tools but I you can get one at Home Depot at around $30. So I took all the pieces out into the garage and took the sander to take off the god awful finish that was on the pieces. To take the finish off a small night stand and a good size dresser took me about 45 minutes (not bad). After I cleaned off the pieces from the sand droppings I began to paint. I picked up a small can of wood furniture black paint from the Home Depot for $7 and this can covered both pieces. I also picked up a can of clear furniture paint sealer for $4. I painted a single coat on each piece let them dry overnight and painted another coat the next day. Later that evening I spray painted the clear furniture sealer over the pieces let that dry and the next day sprayed one more coat. I now needed to find some knobs for my pieces and I had seen some at Anthropologie that I fell in love with. I bought three for $7 a piece for the night stand.

I wasn't quite sure what knobs I wanted for the dresser so I held off on purchasing any more from Anthropologie and I am so glad. The following week I was at the Hobby Lobby and saw that they had a whole bunch of knobs! What is even better than that is that all the knobs were half off! I got knobs on my dresser for $5 a piece and then half off so each was only $2.50!

I love them! They remind me of cinnamon rolls. Anyways, I am still looking for a few sets of handles for the dresser but so far I love the knobs. Here is the final product.....

Looks pretty good right? Again I wish I had taken the before pictures. Also I am looking for handles so that is why you see holes in the top and bottom drawer of the dresser. All in all, re-doing the furniture wasn't as tough as I thought it would be. I am very happy with the results and the amount of money I spent!

Good Finds @ Goodwill

I have recently gotten into searching Goodwill for frames because lets face it frames are so expensive. There are so many frames that are for sale at Goodwill! Of course some of them look like something your great grandmother threw up on but some are great and some just need a little tender loving care. Today I found this awesome piece at my local Goodwill (located below). For a grand total of $5.99 it was mine. I love the rustic looking pictures of Paris on it. I forgot to take the ever important before picture of the piece but it had some chipped cream colored handles on it and it was chipped in many places. So once again I headed amazing Michaels and bought a tube of black acrylic pant for $.99. I was lucky enought to have a multi-purpose sealer at home so I didn't need to buy that (love recycling things from other projects). I painted the whole thing over with the black paint (I'm thinking I wish I would have sanded it down first...oh well) and after that dryed I painted the sealer over the fresh coat. Now I just need to figure out where I'd like to hang it! Thank goodness for Goodwill. Seriously they have tons of stuff you wouldn't expect to find there. I almost bought a bunch of blue glass vases for $3 each but decided I had to see if I had room for them before I just bought them. Next time you are looking for something to do head over to your Goodwill and do some browsing.

Cheap Custom Wall Art

So I first got this idea for inexpensive canvas photos from one of my favorite website www.howdoesshe.com a great site dedicated to ideas for the home and family. So the first thing I did was select some photos I wanted prints of from my computer. I then edited them to black and white because I'm a sucker for black and white photos. I then sent the photos to walgreens photo lab and picked them up later that day. I believe for the photos I spent around $4 (I also picked up a few Arizona Teas and threw away the receipt so I'm not 100% sure...sorry!). I then headed over to heaven on Earth AKA Michael's Craft store to pick up a few supplies. Michael's always has coupons out so I suggest going to their website and signing up for their weekly e-mail coupon mailer because it is the best! At Michael's they were having a sale on their frames so I picked up a frame for $29.00 and it was on sale for $13.99 (score!). I picked up some red ribbon from the dollar section and then picked up a pack of three 5X7 canvases for $2.99. The last thing I needed was some Elmer's Spray Adhesive. My total was $21.38 (I also had a 40% off one item coupon e-mailed to me earlier in the week).

After collecting supplies I headed home and got to work. I opened the canvases and sprayed them with the Elmer's and then pressed down my black and whites on each canvas. After those were dry I hot glued a small red ribbon loop to the back of each canvas and let that dry as well. While everything was driving I hung my backless frame on the wall. After all the canvases were dry I hung each by the ribbon and a small nail on the wall inside the backless frame and I was finished! Total I spent about $30 for a great piece of "custom" wall art.