Art from a hotel room

Instead of spending this week in our little apartment in Ann Arbor, the kids and I made the drive to Manteno, Illinois to be with my husband.  That's where he's working for the time being.  The upside to this little trip is that we get to see Daddy everyday (as opposed to Thursday night to Monday morning), but the downside is having to hang out in a hotel room all week.  With four little kids.  With no car. 

Yeah.  Pretty boring.

The kids entertain themselves with TV and Xbox games (I know, I know, a lot of brain rotting is going on), coloring and drawing, doing pages in some workbooks I bought them and annoying each other, while I get to, um, ...uh .... what do I get to do?  Referee, check Facebook a dozen times a day,  read blogs, change diapers, pin to my Pinterest boards, nap.  Yep.  All of those things.  But I need stimulation!  I need a creative outlet!  I need to CREATE! 

Okay, maybe that's a tad dramatic.  But when my mister suggested that we go to the local Hobby Lobby to find something for me to do, I was all over it. 

Here's what I picked out.

A pad of watercolor paper, a set of watercolor paints and inexpensive brushes.

And here's what I did with them.

 
I am not an artistic painter.  I've painted before, I took a painting class or two in college (I was an art major after all) and I even took a watercolor class but dropped it before I got very far.  I've just never really felt comfortable with it. 

That said, I had a surprisingly good time with my watercolors.  Granted, my subject matter was simple.  How much simpler could you get?  But since I didn't really know what I was doing, I wanted to start off easy.  This let me truly enjoy just playing with the paints. 

I thought I'd get frustrated when my paintings didn't turn out very well, but instead I just let my mistakes happen and tried to learn from them.  The mistakes made me more excited to try again. 

It's been a really long time (too long) since I've sat down and done something artistic, just because I felt like it.  And despite the unremarkable results, I'm so very glad I did.

Fence Board Sign

While changing around the functions of our living room and bonus room a couple of months ago, we took our flat screen TV off the wall downstairs and set it on the console table upstairs. This left us with the big, ugly, black bracket still smack in the middle of the wall downstairs.

Lovely, no?

Instead of taking it down like any normal person would do, I decided I'd rather just cover it up. So I pulled out a few scrap fence boards and a length of 1x2 that I had in the garage and started cutting, sanding, and screwing them together to make a big sign.



I added a few upholstery tacks just for some interest.

A couple of eye screws and some heavy duty wire on the back...

... and I've got a nice little hanger for my new sign.



The wood got beaten a little with a hammer and other tools to dent the boards, then I primed and painted it with Heirloom White and sanded it to distress the paint.

There are so many options for how you could paint your sign and what it could say. Some ideas I considered were:
~ an inspirational quote or word
~ a scripture
~ a line of a song
~ my family's last name and our anniversary date

Once I decided on what the sign would say, I printed out the words (backwards!) in the size I wanted, then arranged the words and fixed them in place with painter's tape.

(As you can see, I ended up changing my mind about the font I wanted.) Using the method outlined in this tutorial, I transferred the letters from my printed paper onto the wood.

I've learned after doing this a few times that the best results are achieved when you've painted your surface with regular old craft acrylic paint. House paint with any kind of sheen and even spray paint tend to repel the ink, so your finished words are very, very light. Because I'd used spray paint on the sign, my transferred letters were visible but too light to read well, so I had to go back over my lettering with some watered down acrylic paint to make them readable, but not too bold.

And here it is in its place of honor.
The finishing touch was to wipe some brown glaze onto the edges and along the seams where the boards meet, just to make it look more worn and aged.


Talk about an easy, inexpensive way to add some personal, unique and high-impact art to a wall.

Even though this project was experimental, I'm actually pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Bye-bye, ugly black bracket thing.

Sleeping baby sign

I made this sign over the weekend.

Found the perfect picture of my second baby sleeping...

...then used an archival pen to draw him onto a small piece of wood from the craft store. Tiny rubber stamps were used for the words and a little distressing around the edges from a stamp pad. Then I gave it a good spray (front and back) with some polyurethane, added a scrap of ribbon for a hanger, and now I have the most personal, precious sleeping baby sign.

I almost hate to put it outside.

Easy photo gift idea

This weekend I went to a baby shower for a neighbor friend of mine, and until the night before I'd only planned to give her a pair of baby shoes as a gift. Then I came across an idea online that I wanted to try to recreate myself.

I'd seen where some vintage blocks were used to spell out the baby's name and were accompanied by some adorable miniature animal toys. The little display was then photographed and sold for $18 per print. As much as I would have loved to give her one of those darling prints framed and ready to be hung in her nursery, I didn't have the time as her shower was the very next afternoon.

Instead I got up the next morning and dug through my kids' baskets of toys until I'd found all the blocks that we own, and set up my own little photography session by a big window in my dining room.

Here's the original photo I ended up using. I used a large sheet of white paper on a dining room chair as my backdrop. I put my camera on the Macro setting (the little flower symbol) and kept my overhead lighting and flash off. I just used what was coming through my east facing window. As you can see in the lower left corner, I accidentally got a little bit of the chair in the shot. Grrr.

First I used Picasa to edit the photo. Here's what the photo looks like after using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" basic fix feature.

Then I used the Glow effect to make it look a little softer.

I cropped out that annoying sliver at the bottom...

... then used Photoscape to add a pretty vignette around the edges.

I ordered an 8x10 print with WalMart.com and picked it up in an hour at my local store. I was in too big a hurry to take a photo of the finished project, but I ended up "matting" it with some purple fabric from my stash in the same way I'd done these for my son's room.


A white 10x13 frame that I already had made the whole thing turn out nicely. I may just have to do this with my own kids' names! I really like the idea of putting special toys in the photo as well, so if you try this look around to see what items you can add to the photo for a personal touch.

Latest projects

Over the past couple of weeks I've been in major project mode. Just one right after another, and sometimes a few at once. Here's what I've finished recently:

Finally, some art on the walls of my son's room.

An alphabet sampler made using this tutorial from Orange Flower Sketchbook.

A little applique and embroidery interpretation of this sweet Japanese fabric.

Using fabric to reverse-matte prints and photos is a great (and inexpensive) way to add color and texture to your art. Just cut a piece large enough to cover the frame's back plus about an inch on all sides, then fold the fabric behind the back and tape it down. Add some double-sided tape to each corner of your art and center on the fabric.
This is a pen and ink reproduction I did a couple years ago of a page from a beautifully illustrated book of my favorite poem, "Winken, Blinken and Nod", also reverse-matted on fabric.

I bought this piece of American Jane Wee Play fabric back when I was working on Hakan's quilt and never did anything with it. I finally decided to turn it into a wall hanging for his room.

I added some padding and a backing, then stitched between the printed panels to make it look a little more quilty and bound it. Can you spot the cute little buttons I added?





Just finished this baby girl quilt about an hour ago for whoever might have a girl next at church. Everyone's been having boys lately, so I have no idea who'll end up with it!

Red, white, yellow and green- reminds me of strawberries and summer! (Don't tell, but I wish I could keep it.) The backing was cut from a nice white cotton tablecloth that I found during my last thrift store visit. It was pretty big, so the rest of it may turn into a picnic quilt.

I just had to use some more of that sweet Amy Butler fabric from my wall art, so I covered a panel of cork and put it in a thrifted frame to make a little message board.

The pocket in the corner was originally intended to just cover a hole in the floral fabric, but it turned out to be a handy place to stash note paper.

I'm also working on bringing this antique dresser back to life. I am sooo excited to get it finished!

Here's a peek at my progress. Isn't that wood gorgeous?! Who could paint that?

I've still got lots of work to do on it, but I'll definitely be posting lots of "after" pictures here when I'm done!

Wall Art

Lately I've felt the need to cover some of the empty spaces on the walls of our home, so I thought I'd share a couple of my latest projects with you. What's really neat about these projects is that you probably have everything you need to make them already!

First I wanted to show you what I ended up doing with the my kids' silhouettes. I'm not sure how much I like it, though. I think I want something that stands out a bit more. Maybe I'll try a dark paper on top next time.
This project is very simple. All you need is paper, an Xacto knife (or very sharp scissors) and a frame. You can find more detailed instructions in the post titled "Simple silhouettes".





Again, another super simple project using just paper, a photo and a frame. This time I wanted to display some 8"x10" photographs of our kids with their grandparents, but the frames I wanted to use were 16"x20". So rather than spend a bunch of money on mattes, I bought two rolls of clearance wrapping paper at World Market and cut them to fit the frame. Then I used some plain coordinating scrapbooking paper and cut it to 9"x11", making a perfect 1" border behind my photo. I then layered everything using double sided tape and now I've got some very pretty, very custom art in our guest room.



Yesterday I felt the need to go on a thrift store hunt, but with a specific goal in mind: find some sturdy, cheap wood frames and a bird book. I have a thing for birds lately, so my idea was to find some nice illustrations and frame them as art. I know, not very original, but it turned out quite nice, don't you think?

I actually came home with 4 books then went through them page by page and cut out each one that had a picture I liked. Now I've got a good stack that I can use how I want. This little guy is just so cute. I might end up painting the frames someday, but the wood matches the frame of my giant bulletin board, so I'll live with them as-is for a while.

And lastly, this project was also mentioned in my silhouettes post. I don't think mine turned out quite as cute as the original, but that's okay. I did it a little differently, though. Instead of painting paper then tracing and cutting out the animal shapes, I just printed them onto colored cardstock and then cut out the images. If you do it like this you need to remember that your animal will end up facing the opposite direction that you print it, because you'll need to flip it over when you're done so as not to see the printed ink. Keep this in mind especially if you're using one-sided paper like I did with the elephant. I accidentally printed onto the red side the first time, only to realize that the back was white.

Instead of printing the French text provided in the original instructions, I chose to write the lyrics to 3 lullabies that I sing to my babies. It makes this art project just a little more personal and special to me. Do you recognize the words behind the birdy? Not exactly a lullaby, but they don't mind. :) I've got a couple more ideas for some wall art that I'll be trying out soon, so I'll be sure to show you the results (if it works out!) right here. Hope you'll give some of these ideas a try!