Four Wall Canvas

I needed something above my television. It is a huge hall but the TV sticks out and its really just an awkward situation. So I decided to gather up some canvases from Michaels. I picked up some canvases for about $6 for two.

I then selected a four acrylic paint colors I wanted to paint the canvases.

Using some paint brushes I had laying around I began to paint the canvases each one solid color. Since acrylic paint really isn’t meant for canvases it doesn’t spread very evenly but that is the look I was trying to achieve. I didn’t want the canvases to look “too perfect” which wasn’t a problem at all ha. I used long brush strokes from one end of the canvas to the other. Here is the gold canvas.

The red canvas.

The green one.

Last…the blue one. I love this blue color. Love it!

I then used some stencils I was able to find in the Hobby Lobby clearance section.

To stencil on the canvases I cut up a sponge I bought from the dollar store.

Here is what the first canvas looked like as I began to stencil.

I continued to stencil each canvas and used a small brush to correct mistakes from sponging outside the stencil, or smudges or just plain goof-ups. Here is the final product after the canvases had dried and been hung up.

Easy Floral Arrangement

I needed something for my side table next to my couch so I went and got my Goodwill on. I picked up a cheap, pretty, blue vase.

And in case you couldn’t read that price tag….

“Julia’s Attic” is a section of home decor items at my local Goodwill. I’m not sure if this is for a charity of some sorts and maybe next time I’m there I should find out. Anyways after my purchase I headed to Hobby Lobby to pick up a few items to complete my vase.

 

Some “American Moss” for $2.47.

Vase insert for $3.99.

A single flower for $2.99. I then got to work on putting the arrangement together. My vase insert was a little wide so I simply used a butter knife to trim it down.

 

I then pushed my flower down the vase insert and placed it in the vase.

First, off sorry this picture is blurry I have no idea what happened :( Second, my flower was wilting :( I simply took the paper my vase was wrapped in from Goodwill and stuffed it around the vase insert so that my flower would stand up nice and perfect.

There much better (the hammer was used for a different project and just snuck into my shot). Next, I needed to cover up that nasty paper so I used my American Moss to do the trick.

So natural looking right? ha (also these scissors and pliers were not used in this project I have no idea why random tools keep coming in my pictures…oh well). I then placed my vase on my side table.

 

Again I am going to apologize for about the974982634920734 time in this post. Sorry this picture is dark. I need a lamp in this corner it is so stinking dark in this room but I just haven’t found one at a price and style I like.

Book Page Canvas

Lately around blog land I have been seeing many different projects involving book pages and I think they’re all pretty cool. I decided that I wanted to do something with the millions of old books I have laying around. I really liked the idea of covering a canvas with book pages that I saw at Jones Design Company. This is a picture from Jones Design Company of her finished project…

Beautiful right? I love the glitter bird at the bottom. I knew I wanted to do something similar so I decided to head to Hobby Lobby and pick up a canvas and I found out they were 30% off! So my $18.99 canvas ended up being closer to $14 with tax.

So I gathered an old book, the rest of my supplies and got to work.

 

I ripped out many pages from the book from various chapters and tried to be random on the page numbers (not that anyone would really look too closely…but I would notice). I then gathered my trusty Mod Podge and began to lay out the pages.

I began by laying out the pages side by side and row by row. After stepping back and looking I decided I didn’t like how “perfect” the pages looked like this so I began to add layers and lay the pages in a more “random” fashion.

I liked this look much better. All the wrinkles you see from the pages I pushed out with my fingers (your fingers get a tad bit sticky but other than that it works great). To finish off my canvas I used some old stencils laying around to spell out….”Once there was a boy and a girl” I added this to the top of my canvas. I then slowly and painfully painted in the stencils with acrylic black paint by hand.

This is the final project. I added the little heart at the bottom with the three dots because I didn’t want to put “the end” I wanted it to be a continued story.

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House of Hepworths

Kitchen Utensil Holder

I have about zero kitchen drawer space and a ton of counter space….what to do. I wanted something for my utensils so I decided to make a holder to display on my counter. I didn’t want to spend any money on this project because I’ve been looking for a really cool glass utensil holder but haven’t found that right one yet. I decided to create a temporary one using items I already had. I started searching around and found an oatmeal container I decided would be the main part of this project (it was a little taller than I would have liked but it would do).

Next I added a few strips of duct tape to make the cumbersome container a bit more support. First vertically .

 

Then horizontally.

Then vertically. After adding duct tape I cut the center out of the plastic lid.

 

I placed a few drops of hot glue in the bottom of the container and placed the middle plastic cutout in the bottom to give it a little added support. I then placed a few drops of hot glue around the edge of the container and placed the outside of the plastic on the top of the container to add again…….more support.

I didn’t want the top to be clear plastic so I added a few coats of acrylic black pain I had in my craft closet.

 

To cover the nice duct tape and oatmeal label I decided to take some old Life magazines I had to add to the outside of the container.

I then cut these newspapers in strips and Mod Podged them on to the container.

After I Mod Podged the container I was all finished!

Like I said earlier it is a little big but it works a temporary fix!

Simple Photo Display

I wanted a simple way to display some photos without the extreme cost of photo frames. I went to Michaels and picked up some canvases. They came in packs of two for about 3 dollars a pack. At Michaels I also picked up some Elmer’s bond glue that looks like this…

I then had some prints sent to Walgreens and I changed them to be black and white. After I had all the supplies I got to work. I sprayed a canvas with the Elmer’s glue and then placed one of my prints down. I continued this easy step with all the prints and set them to dry for about an hour. Now when it came to deciding how to hang the prints I decided to use some ribbon I had laying around. I hot glued a drop on the back of two corners of each canvas and place some ribbon on the hot glue. After these were dry I simply nailed a small nail in my wall and played around with the pictures until I had them hung how I liked them. This is the finished product.

Yes those are black and whites of dogs! Those are all the dogs in our lives. Aren’t they cute????

Wine Bottle Advertising

I work at a golf course where we do an event called “wine and nine”. It is basically an event for couples to play nine holes of golf and participate in a wine tasting after their round. I wanted to do something different than the boring old flyer to advertise for this event, so I got to thinking. I decided to use wine bottles to advertise. My boyfriend was more than willing to participate by drinking some wine with me so that I could have some empty bottles. After a few nights of some wine I had three bottles to work with.

Now I just needed to remove the labels. A waiter at a wine bar once told me that to easily remove wine labels use cold water. I filled my sink with cold water and submerged the bottles for about 20 minutes. I wanted to save the labels for another project so I knew I had to be careful to not rip the labels when I took them off. The label is sort of a attached to sticker so I removed the paper from the sticker and it then looked like this.

The stickers were not coming off as easily as I would like so I soaked the bottles for another 20 minutes and the stickers came off pretty easily. I dried off the bottles and got to work on the labels I wanted to make. I simply used word to create a label I liked. I played with the fonts for a bit and came up with Poor Richard, a font I’ve been using a lot lately. I changed the layout to two columns and printed out my “labels”. I then simply cut the labels an used Mod Podge to paste the labels on the bottles.

On this bottle I placed the label a little too high and the top got a little wrinkled because it was placed where the bottle begins to curve. The other wrinkles on the bottle I smoothed out with my fingers. I let the bottles dry and then added some ribbon on the top of the bottle but still wasn’t satisfied that there was enough flashy-ness to be noticed. I decided to make a sort of wine stopper for the bottles. I used some old wine corks and placed some heavy duty glue at the top.

 

I placed a logo ball on the top of corks and let them dry. Here is the finished products.

You could easily do this project for a party and use the bottles for a centerpiece and customize the labels however you want.

Adding a Bit of Fall

Ok, so living in Texas it is really hard to get in the mood for Fall when it is still 90 degrees or more outside. I was browsing blog land the other day and kept seeing all these cute fall wreath ideas. I wanted to do just a little something to help get me in the mood for fall so I decided I wanted to make a wreath. I went ahead and went with Thrifty Decor Chick’s idea which you can see HERE. The whole wreath (including the wreath hanger) cost me $5! Thrifty Decor Chick does an excellent job of explaining how to make it so again, check hers out HERE. Mine sadly didn’t turn out as cute as hers but hey it was fun and it helped me forget about it being 93 outside for a few minutes.

The leaves are a little less “fire” colored in person my camera just wanted to amp up the colors I guess. Can you believe all I paid for this was $5??

Vinyl Wall Decor

So I have a new obsession with vinyl and the company called "Arts Beats”. “Art Beats” is  available at Hobby Lobby. I’ve been trying to decorate my bedroom around the Van Gogh painting “Starry Night”. It is a very popular painting but hey… I love it. I love the colors in the painting and decided to try to center my bedroom around it. I had a print of the frame above my bed in a small frame and thought it was pretty small and didn’t really look very proportional. I was browsing Hobby Lobby one day and saw the vinyl printings of many different prints. I was excited to see the “Starry Night” print among the bunch and snatched it up. The print was about $30 (sorry I don’t have the exact amount, I lost my ticket from Hobby Lobby and I couldn’t find the prices online). Anyways I place the vinyl above my bed. It was so easy and I could un-peel and re-peel without the piece losing any “stickiness”. I want to get a backless frame a little bit larger than the vinyl and hang it with the piece… if I do I will be sure to post a picture

I also have a “Paris” themed guest bathroom and found this Eiffel Tower vinyl for $14. It came in three pieces and I just continued to play with the pieces until they looked even.

Hookin' Up With HoH

Today I am participating in House of Hepworth's week 15 of "Hookin' Up with HoH"


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