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Showing posts with label cheap art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheap art. Show all posts

Ombre Art.

February 11, 2013

I have been on a major art-making-spree lately.  We had a lot of blank spaces on our walls, and I was determined to fill them up.  I started with some cheap and easy art for our bedroom, a mirror makeover, some DIY wood shelves, a lovey-dovey wood painted sign, and now it’s time for me to show you some ombre canvas art.

To be quite honest, the only thing I knew when I purchased this large canvas, was that it’d fill in the gaping hole above our made-over file cabinet.

To begin the piece, I grabbed my go-to paint colors {grey and blue-greens…anyone surprised?} and an old paint brush.  I started with grey at the top and thought I’d work my way down to the darkest teal I had.  After I painted the grey on, I realized it’d be fun to put a quote on the canvas…so I dug through my craft supplies until I found some vinyl letters.  I eyeballed the quote “all you need is love” onto the canvas and prayed it was semi-centered and level. 


To keep the bleeding of paint to a minimum, I painted over the letters with white paint first.  Once that was semi-dry, I poured on my next color and just worked my way down the canvas.



After all the colors were done, I carefully peeled all the letters off while things were still wet.  Then I left it to dry over night.


Although the quote is a bit off-center {I mean, I did eyeball the placement}, I'm still happy with my new ombre art!  The cool colors pop beautifully above our yellow file cabinet.



Plus, I love having positive, uplifting quotes to read when I leave our room each morning. :)

Cheap and Easy, Again.

January 17, 2013

When I re-arranged our bedroom {the first time}, I created some cheap and easy art to hang on the walls.  It served it’s purpose, but since I got all wild and crazy a few weekends ago, I needed some new art to fill different blank spaces on the walls.

Simple and inexpensive solution?  Go into our ugly basement, dig out some cheap canvases I purchased in bulk from Michael’s months ago, and get my Picasso on.

The canvases I had on hand were 12” x 12”, so I knew I’d need a grouping of 4 to fill the space I was working on.  I used some metallic gold spray paint I already had to cover each canvas including all the sides.  {So it didn’t stick to the floor, I sat each canvas on a small paint tray.}  Normally, I would never spray paint something indoors, unless I was in a VERY well ventilated area.  But since 1) it’s the middle of winter, 2) I’m impatient and 3) I just wanted to get this project started, I went against my better judgment and quickly got the job done.  I used even, light coats, and each canvas was done after just a few minutes.



{FYI, I turned the heat off before I started spraying to keep the fumes from possibly traveling to other parts of the house, and then I opened the windows and doors in the basement after I was done for about 30 minutes to let everything air out.  Easy peasy.}

After the spraying was done, I let everything dry, and I didn't return to it for a few days...because I'm a crazy person and like to do a million projects at once.  I can't help it.  I get all these ideas in my head and have to just go with it!

Once my project ADD subsided and I found my way back to my bedroom art, I sat on the couch and taped off different stripes all over each canvas.  I didn’t measure anything, and just eyeballed the spacing.  After each canvas was covered, I went over all of the lines with a credit card to make sure they made good contact with the canvas.


Then I headed back to the basement to find some leftover paint from the accent wall in our bedroom.  I got out a small foam roller, and rolled away.  While the paint was still wet, I carefully peeled off all of the tape, and left the canvases to dry.


After a few days {that dang project ADD}, I got out my trusty 3M picture hanging strips and stuck one to the back of each canvas. 


Then I stuck each canvas on our bedroom wall, and voila!  More cheap and easy art for our house!  I love that I didn’t have to go out and buy one thing for this project...everything came from our basement or one of our closets.




So there ya go...round two of my cheap and easy art! :) 

Wild Weekend.

December 19, 2012

How is Christmas only a week away?!?!?  I feel like December flew by in a flash.  And because time is just slipping away, I knew I had to take on a few nagging projects this past weekend, otherwise they wouldn’t be done until at least mid-January {but probably February if I’m being honest ;)}.

So I put my productive pants on Saturday morning and got to work.  The first thing I tackled was painting a sign for a dear bloggy friend who kindly asked for one after I posted about my cheap art for our bedroom.


Then I was determined to get some frames hung up in our hallway.  From the get-go, our hallway lacked a bit of appeal.  It was just b-o-r-i-n-g, and due to our open floor plan, you could see quite a bit of it from many areas of the house.  I tried to amp it up a bit by adding a stencil, and while it worked, I felt like it still lacked a lil' something...especially since our thermostat stuck our like a sore thumb in that space.


My solution?  Add a couple frames to the walls...and since it's Christmas time, add some free, festive printables.  I found some cute ones online, uploaded them to CVS, sized them to fit my 5 x 7 frames and picked them up the very same day.  I even had them in their frames weeks ago, I just never got around to hanging all of them.

Some were quick and easy...because I was putting them in frames already on the walls.  They went up when the rest of our Christmas decor went up.


All of the others just sat in our living room for quite some time. 


What can I say…I absolutely DESPISE hanging things.  I’m actually surprised I hung them before Christmas passed us by.  Especially since it took me months just to hang this tiny gallery wall.

Using 3M command strips and my iPhone level definitely helped to make the process much easier...on both me and my walls.





I’m super pleased with the outcome!  Now you barely notice the camouflaged thermostat.







Okay, so that’s a complete lie…but I’m going to pretend that it helps to take away from how it was all in-yo’-face before.

So after all that fun, I decided to take my efforts to South Beach our master bedroom.  I have been dying to re-arrange our bedroom for a while.  We started out here, with old furniture and not the right paint color.  Then I brought in our Craigslisted makeovers, painted the walls for the 2nd time and switched up the layout.  Well, it was time to change things again….because I was never 100% sold on how we set things up. 

Needless to say, this went down on Saturday night…


  
What?  Making over a room isn’t your idea of a wild Saturday night???  Well it is in this house! ;) {Kidding.  Sort of.}

Stay tuned for our bedroom changes, and even some master bath stenciling!  Woot woot!!