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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Happy Fall Y'all


Enjoying a lovely fall weekend complete with funnel cake from the seafood festival and a yummy Pumpkin spice latte :))))

Have a great week!!!!

Monday, September 23, 2013

Frames, frames and more frames!



Ok so I'm obsessed with decorating my own frames! I recently realized that I could totally make those awesome frames you see everywhere for a fraction of the cost!



These are the frames I've done so far. The two sets were wedding gifts and the red one is a makeover I did on a frame we already had! 

I'm going to try and give step by step instructions and hopefully the whole process will make sense!

I started with these supplies...
You'll need...
1. Acrylic paint
2. Flat sponge brush

3. Round dot sponge brush
4. stencil 
5. Frame
6. Sand paper
7. Spray Laquer (optional)
8. Ribbon (optional) 
9. Craft glue (optional) 


Ok...I know it sounds like a lot, but most of these things you only have to buy once and then you're set. 
I found the frame at a local craft store and that's also where I got my stencil. The stencil is a Martha Stewart pack that can be found in most craft stores or here.

The first step is to paint your frame(s) using your background color. This will be the color you see the least of if you use this stencil.

You'll need to do about two coats of your base color


Then once that dries you can start stenciling with your other color.


You do this using your round dot sponge brush. It takes some practice the first time just because getting the stencil in the right place can be a little tricky, but once you know what you're doing it goes by pretty quickly. Also, after I'm done stenciling I take my stencil color and go around the edges of the frame to make it match the front.

Here they are before distressing...

these turned out more St. Patricks day than I realized they would :( 

To distress your frames you can use sandpaper and also a little brown paint. Just put brown paint on your flat sponge and wipe it almost dry. Then just brush it across the frame and around the edges as much as you want...and ta da!

Now they look better! 

For these frames rather than doing a stacked frame effect I opted to add a ribbon. Sooooo I made up a little faux bow and then used some craft glue to attach it to the top of the frame.

it helps to use clamps to hold the bows in place while they dry

Finally about one to two hours later you've got two awesome DIY frames!



Here's the other set of frames as did as a wedding gift!

these were actually four frames that I stacked together...and I used spray paint for the background color on these. I got these frames from a local craft store and they were made to be stacked.

The other frame I stenciled was one we made a while ago and I thought it was just a little plain.


 I just stenciled the edges, changed the picture...and distressed it of course!


I'm in love with making my own frames now and it's so much less expensive to do it yourself! I plan on making a bunch of these for christmas presents and also to decorate our house as the seasons change!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Fall flowers



my lovely husband brought these home last night just in time to start decorating for fall this weekend :)


Monday, September 16, 2013

Old grain sack = weekend project!

Here it is...


This will be the third time we've used an old grain sack to add some character to our boring builder grade tan walls. The first two got chopped up and stuck in frames. 


we haven't hung this one yet since the new grain sack took its spot

This time though the sack was too nice to just cut up. So after thinking on it for a few weeks I figured out what I wanted to do (or wanted my lovely husband to do). 


Again I don't have any pictures of the progress but lets just say it took awhile because I may not have expressed exactly what I wanted in the beginning :)

this was the first try...


but we ended up with this.


We basically just attached the sack to a piece of foam to make it a little sturdier and then made a frame out of scrap wood. I painted the frame white and then used a little brown paint to make it look old. We also attached chicken wire in front of the sack. I originally thought about clipping on pictures to the wire and have it be a little picture display, but the sack itself is just so awesome I think we'll leave it how it is. 


I love using these inexpensive sacks, that my dad finds at antique stores, to liven up our walls...i'm just running out of places to put them! 



Monday, September 9, 2013

A little bathroom decor



A year and a half after moving into our new house I finally found/made something for our bathroom wall! 


So the day after I got home from Georgia I was still super pumped about this little creation the lovely ladies from Truth Be Told Art taught us to make at the shower 

my favorite thing they taught us was how to distress the edges. Soooo I knew I had a canvas, paint, letter stickers and some burlap ribbon....and that I had a very bare bathroom wall that needed some love. I also knew that I wanted to distress something...and so it began.

Don't pay attention to those letter stencils...I never used them on this project 
I placed the stickers on the canvas where I wanted the words to be and then gently dabbed paint over them with a big dot sponge brush. These stickers were a good font but they didn't really stick to anything so I had to be really careful. 

Once I got the whole canvas painted I pulled the letters off. I did end up going back over a few spots to fill in the paint where it looked a little light.

then I had to add dots. I'm pretty much addicted to my dot sponge brush! 

And the last paint step I did was to try and distress it.
I actually didn't have brown paint so I ended up mixing red and green paint together to make brown. It made a nice brown color that worked really well! 

Finally after applying a coat of clear matte spray laquer I added a burlap ribbon and bow

I really like the way it turned out, and I didn't spend any money on it because I had all of the supplies leftover from other projects. However, I probably would have chosen a different shade of green if I had gone to the store to pick out colors, but thats the shade I had. 

The whole thing probably took maybe an hour, just because you have to let the paint dry between each color. 

So not only did I end up with a super cute chevron painting, but I also learned how to distress things with brown paint and I pretty much haven't stopped using the technique ever since! 


Saturday, September 7, 2013

So it's been a little while...

hey all...pretty sure it's been almost two years since I've done anything with my lovely little blog (that I'm not sure anyone reads anyway but I'm gonna keep on posting ). Since then we've moved, gotten a new little furry man, I've had a few jobs and gone craft/decor crazy! I recently realized that I've been doing a lot of blog worthy projects lately and figured maybe now was a good time to start this thing back up. 

I dont really know which project to start with so I'll just go with one that I'm pretty proud of!

 Soooo I was throwing my bestest friend a wedding shower and I found a ton of great ideas and things I could buy for it on etsy and pinterest, but two weeks before the shower our sweet Huck man decided to get sick and his vet bill kinda cut into my budget. So time to get crafty! 

Originally i wanted to buy this super cute door hanger...


but I realized with a little sewing help I could probably make it myself. 

So I used some burlap my parens already had and bought the paint colors I wanted and then I just jumped in and started trying to recreate what I saw on etsy. 


I cut two cake shaped pieces of burlap and then painted one piece. I then had my lovely sewing genius sew the two sides together and then we stuffed it with batting (and a piece of cardboard to keep it straight). Then we sewed in a piece of tulle...and it was starting to come together!


The last two steps were to attach a hanger and then add the "I do". Both of these tasks kind of got outsourced to my dad after several failed attempts on my part. 

and out of nowhere it was finished! 

I was so surprised that it turned out as well as it did, and the "I do" is detachable so we can use it for birthdays too. The whole thing took about two days because we had to let the paint dry and we just kind of did it bit by bit between other things. I wish I had better pictures but I wasn't really planning on blogging about it. 

Here's a tutorial on another awesome blog that shows you how to make some more burlap door hangers!

Live a Little Wilder
This would have helped me tremendously...but I managed to sort of figure the process out as I went.

So there it is....almost two years later and I'm back. Maybe this time I'll stick with it :)