Art We Heart
A Strange Self-Imposed Challenge
We have a new friend hanging out in our kitchen. I found this guy at Hobby Lobby during one of their all-the-time 50% off sales for $12. You know me and faux animals. Faux sho they’re mine.
Then he sat in our playroom for a while (a while = 6+ months) and I recently walked in there and had this moment where I said to myself “Self: you have got to stop hoarding things in this room. Use them or lose them.” Which led to an initiative I like to call “Dude, Get On That Already.” The dude being me. Naturally. So I’ll probably revisit this initiative over the next few weeks and months (at least I hope I will) as I systematically pare down the hoarded playroom clutter and decide whether I’m going to keep things and actually use/hang/enjoy them or craigslist/donate/yard sale ‘em. A lot of things end up in there for one of two reasons:
- I’m not quite sure where to hang them (so I stick them there and say “I’ll get to it later” and later turns into never)
- I plan to somehow alter things by painting or staining them (so I stick them there and say “I’ll get to it later” and later turns into never)
Well not anymore, folks. I dug in and grabbed my horny little friend and marched his antlers all around the house, trying to find a spot to hang him up and actually enjoy him instead of hiding him away in The Room Of Chaos (yes, that’s its formal name these days, so it gets capital letters and everything). Anyway, after walking around for a while I decided it’d be fun in the kitchen next to the fridge, but the original black color (although very cool in its own right) wasn’t working there. So I dragged my buns outside with a piece of cardboard and some leftover white primer + spray paint.
You know my “thin thin thin and even coats” catchphrase when it comes to spray paint, so I snapped these three in-progress spraying shots to show you how each coat is a nice thin mist. You definitely don’t get full coverage with one thin coat of spray paint – which is a good thing. You’re doing it right if it takes about three of them to slowly accumulate. And always keep your hand moving and hold it 8-10″ away. No thank you drippies. Not on my watch.
Speaking of spray painting tips, this guy’s antlers were still looking dark on the underside, which I knew would be seen when we hung him up, so I waited a full day for his front to cure and then flipped him over to give him a nice deep tissue massage with spray paint on the back.
John and I actually considered a few crazier colors (plum, navy, yellow) but thought that the white would look nice on our grellow walls- especially with the gold mirror in the laundry room so close by (it’s on the other side of the doorway, so we didn’t want it to have to fight for attention). But I have big plans for some of the other things lurking in the playroom. Oh yes, plum, navy, and beyond…
Don’t mind the paint touch ups we have been meaning to do for over a month. I’ll get to it sometime. Unless I’m too busy spray painting various faux animals.
Work it, antlers. Work it.
As for how I hung it on our paneled walls, anchors are a gal’s best friend.
Here’s the box we’ve had… oh… maybe a year?
They seem to last, which is nice because it’s so annoying to run to the store for little hanging stuff. Boo to that. Anyway, for those who might not know how they work, this might sound like “health class” in 5th grade, but the anchor is the white thing and the screw is the silver thing you know what a screw looks like. So you drill a tiny pilot hole into the wall, hammer (or push) the anchor into the hole, and then screw the screw into the anchor.
A into B, baby. Oh but just leave a little bit of the screw sticking out for hanging whatever it is you’re hanging on it (the anchor should be flush with the wall, but the screw might stick out half an inch). Das it.
I gotta tell ya, it took less than an hour of actual time (drying time doesn’t count because you don’t have to stand there and watch it). And that not only includes my little spraying trips in and out for those thin coats but also the whole hanging shebang after he was fully dry. So I have high hopes for my little “Dude, Get On That Already” project. I might just keep this up! And if I ever want to pop it off the wall for a fabulous royal wedding, it makes for a great fascinator.
So are you guys with me on this weird little self-imposed challenge? Any items (or an entire room full of stuff) that you’ve been putting off? Wanna tackle it with me as I go? I’d love to get to at least one thing a week but with kitchen/kid/book stuff I’m not sure if I can stick to that, but it’s definitely the goal! Oh and what should I name this guy? Or is naming white faux animals weird when they don’t have faces? Malcolm? I keep getting Malcolm.
And speaking of projects… surprise!
My apologies for the crazy lighting (oh yeah and the ladders and the dropcloths) but we’re in the midst of getting new lighting! Hah. So there’s just one floor lamp illuminating the back corner of our windowless interior room. Which explains why it looks like a glowing Katy Perry alien is hiding back there or something. But as crazy as it looks… wahoo, it’s progress! More details about the whole process as soon as it’s a wrap (and it’s all cleaned up, photographed, and written out) on Monday!
Our Living Room Art Switch
Since lots of folks have asked for close up photos and more of an explanation about our little art switcheroo above the sofa, here it is. It’s such an easy project that anyone can do (probably for under $5 if you have the frames and some small photos or prints that you love (images from greeting cards or postcards could even work). So we figured we’d share the goods while we work on our backsplash (those goods will be up tomorrow am!).
Our frames above the sofa started out with colorful paper in them ($5 worth of craft paper from Michael’s to be exact). That added some fun oomph for a while, but the beauty of that $5 price tag was the freedom to switch things around and just sort of go with the flow. So they sat as plain blocks of color for a while…
… and then we added some fun local art prints (just taped in the middle of our colored paper)…
… but after our new rug arrived we were jonesing for something less colorful (since we had amassed a ton of colorful pillows and some bright accessories like the ceramic hurricanes on the desk). We also decided we could use some more texture, so that somehow triggered me to look in my fabric scrap bin and realize that I had enough burlap-ish textured linen-ish stuff to do the trick.
Sorry for that terrible description. It’s just a sand-colored fabric that sort of looks like linen or burlap (you know, it has those crosshatched lines running through it) that I got on super clearance from JoAnn fabrics a while back – so I don’t think it’s actually real linen and it’s a bit too soft to be burlap.
Here’s my completely not scientific framing method. I just:
- unstuck my little art squares that had been taped to the colorful fabric with a loop of tape
- used the same loop of tape to stick them to the center of the eight 12″ x 12″ fabric squares for each frame
- taped the fabric to the back of the frame’s mat on all sides (to keep it from looking saggy and wiggly)
- regular old scotch tape worked for that part, but if you have heavier fabric, something stronger like duct tape might be better
That’s it! Oh and these are Ikea’s ribba frames (with 12 x 12″ openings) if that helps. I love that my tiny polariod-ish prints make you look closer, and when you do, you see the texture in the fabric behind them. It’s really sweet, especially in person. I keep glancing over at them when I sit on the sofa.
Sometimes Burger takes John-sprawled-out-on-the-ottoman-taking-photos-of-the-art to mean that he’s supposed to sit on him. Naturally. So we took more photos and shared them over on Young House Life. Naturally.
Anyway, so the art thing was a free swap and I’ve been using the colored paper that I took out for other projects around the house – like John’s boyscout badge Christmas present.
Oh and since a few folks also requested an open-ottoman shot to see how it’s all organized in there, here ya go:
The big woven basket is my paint chip bin (yes I keep various paint decks in there and even save loose paint chips so I can later do weird things like make art or ornaments with them). The other three baskets are for various Clara toys. There’s also a giant blanket in there (it can actually stretch across the entire monster of a sectional that we have and cover me in one corner and John in the other corner, which makes me crazyhappy). It’s just a king sized blanket I found at HomeGoods a while back for 25 bucks.
So there you have it – two living room goings-on. What have you guys been framing lately? Any fabric “mats” or backgrounds? What about fabric as art? That’s always fun too! Any ottoman organization? We learned really fast that tossing things in without smaller bins and baskets = chaos. Like a small tornado hit ottoman-ville every time we cracked it open. So apparently it’s all about sub-containment inside of larger containment devices. Lesson learned.
Psst- A reader (thanks Caroline!) sent along the link to this article about why people seem to be “wired” with the desire to DIY things, and it’s so interesting! The “add one egg” thing is especially amazing to me.
Holiday By Hand
Two Sundays ago we hit up the Richmond Craft Mafia’s craft show called Handmade Holiday. As one of my friends described it, it was like Etsy… only in real life.
We love supporting/meeting local (and not so local) artists and artisans, so we went expecting to see some cool things, bump into a few people we knew, and maybe even to snag a gift or two. Instead, we saw LOTS of cool stuff, bumped into DOZENS of friends and blog buddies, and snagged a BUNCH of gifts. Well, I guess I should clarify. They were gifts for ourselves. Here’s a snapshot of our handmade bounty after we returned home and laid everything out on the counter:
1. A print from Zou Zou’s Basement ($25) which is a print of a mixed media rabbit painting. We thought it was fun and colorful. We actually almost got this elephant, but at the last minute Clara said “Bunny rabbit!” and the switch was made.
2. A robot coloring sheet from Turnerbots which they threw in for free after we purchased a bunch of ornaments (see #5). So nice! Clara had a blast coloring it when we got home because, as you may have read here on Young House Life or here in our desk-building post, Clara is a coloring fanatic as of late.
3. Two small canvas paintings from Amy Keith Barney ($15 each) who mainly specializes in stained glass – but the bright colors of these felt perfect for Clara’s frame wall. And can you beat $15 for such amazing little original paintings?
4. A Virginia-shaped ornament from Funnel Cloud Studio ($7). The ornament had us at hello (yay maps!) and we almost got one of her Virginia prints too, but managed to practice a smidge of restraint. She has Maryland and DC ones too for anyone interested…
5. Ceramic letter ornaments from the aforementioned Turnerbots ($7 for all four), one each for Clara, me, Sherry and Burger. Turnerbots mainly specializes in candy-colored pottery like these cool vases and cheeky robots:
6. A crudload of business cards for all sorts of vendors – every booth was seriously worth stopping for!
7. A letterpress card from Almanac Industries (free) who had one of the coolest booths at the whole fair. You could just feel their passion for what they do.
And we loved that our initials were coincidentally on display (doesn’t take much to excite us). Well Sherry’s, Burger’s and mine were – and if that P had been a C we really would have been downright giddy.
And since we couldn’t support every vendor that we admired with a purchase, we thought we’d at least show them some love by sharing their cool stuff here. Like these “Dangerous Animal” notebooks from MonkeyDogStudio. Sherry and I disagree on which one we think is the funniest. I vote the octopus with the ninja throwing stars, but Sherry died when she saw the squirrel with the pistol.
Speaking of cheeky animals, there were also cool woodblock prints and cards featuring some chic birds with fresh, punny attitudes (Yo Momma!) from Bowerbox Press.
Continuing the theme of craftiness with a sense of humor, we loved all of the funny crocheted items – like this jellyfish and ray-gun from Needle Noodles…
… and more jellyfish (this time as ornaments) and a crocheted conch shell from Lazymuse Productions.
There were also this awesome assortment of colorful faux antlers (they were made of resin) from The New Woodsman. Predictably, Sherry my Jersey wife was most in love with the metallic gold ones (sadly not pictured).
Illegible Ink‘s print of vegetables was really charming and detailed. You could stand there and study it for hours. There was a really funny meat one too.
There was also lots of jewelry at the fair, like this peapod necklace from Lucky Accessories that Sherry mentally bookmarked for the day that we have more than one child (it was available with one pea, but she figured she’d rather wait and beef up her pea quotient before jumping the peapod gun).
We also saw some familiar faces, like Love Elaine (who gave away a fabric wreath back in May). She had lots of Christmas fabric goods, but what caught our eye most was this festive kids apron. Clara would look so cute rocking this while making cookies.
And there was Phil Barbato, another giveaway alum, who makes these funky ape stuffed animals amongst other things (Clara said “buh-bye monkey!” when we walked away):
We actually bought a print from Phil this summer at another Richmond art event (the First Friday Art Walk), but it wasn’t until returning home with our new crafty treasures that we finally figured out the perfect place to hang it along with two of our Handmade Holiday finds (don’t mind the frames, they’re just what we had around).
This little frame collection is on the short wall right outside Clara’s bedroom door, opposite the playroom door. We thought she’d love saying “Hi” and “Goodnight” to the bunny, but instead her favorite thing to do is point at the robots and say “Color! Color!” Figures…
So that was our adventure in handmade arts and crafts. Are any of you going handmade for the holiday this year? We’d love to hear about any craft fairs in your area, or if you’ve snagged any crafty gifts or items for yourself or the ones you love.
Pssst- For more gift-related fun, check out Mrs. Limestone’s post about the whole Secret Santa thing that Sherry and a bunch of other fellow bloggers have been having fun with. You can even guess who had who to win a prize over there!
Our 2012 Calendar (For You!) + A Secret
First we’ll get to the freebie download for all of you lovely people, because you know we heart you for reading our little ol’ blog. Since we’ve made a tradition of designing a homemade calendar each year (and 2012 ain’t gonna wait just cuz we’re mid-kitchen reno) we stole a moment – while the wood putty dried – to throw something together for the big one-two.
Our calendars from the last few years have all been text-based (you know, as opposed to full of photos). Like our 2010 calendar, where we assembled a dozen weird family phrases & inside jokes and laid them out in simple bright colors:
Or our 2011 calendar, where we used a numerical fact about our family to represent each month (ex: May, the fifth month, said: “Five years in Richmond” and July, the seventh month said: “Seven years spent together”).
Well, this year we ditched the text-on-white theme and went full-on photographic…
Each month of our 2012 calendar features a photo that we took that same month in 2011, so it’s an easy way for us to look back and say “oh yeah, so that’s what Clara looked like exactly a year ago.” Admittedly a photo calendar isn’t a groundbreaking idea, but it seemed really fun to toss together since 2011 is the first full calendar year that we’ve spent with Clara in our lives. And that girl can pose like Tyra Banks.
We gave each pic a “historical” feel by applying a free Photoshop action from the Pioneer Woman called “Heartland” (you can download that here) and then we brought color back into the calendar with a bright curvy border on the top and the bottom. The font that we used is a free download called Lobster (which you can get here).
And speaking of downloads, you can download our Photoshop file featuring all twelve colorful frames here. Which means you can personalize the whole thing for yourself (and then print it out and hang it proudly in your kitchen/office/mudroom) by:
- adding your own photos as a new layer behind each frame using Photoshop
- being sure to download the font if you’d like to alter the text (otherwise it could switch to a default and look wonky)
- applying the Heartland action to your photos if you want a similar look (or you can making ‘em black & white, full color, etc)
Now all we’ve gotta do is buy a new color ink cartridge so we can print this sucker out on cardstock, cut it to size, and hang it in our finished kitchen (probably with a binder clip or two so we can easily rotate each page out as the months go by). Oh wait, guess we gotta finish the kitchen before we can “hang this in our finished kitchen”… so maybe it’ll be up by February or March. Haha. Either way, happy almost 2012 everyone! Hope you have fun making a little calendar of your own (or even whipping some up as gifts for friends and family members)!
But on to the secret… a little package arrived from my Secret Santa! Remember I mentioned that sweet Mrs. Limestone invited me to play along among a bunch of awesome fellow bloggers (and I was worried I would totally choke when it came to figuring out two perfect gifts to send someone’s way throughout the month of December)? Well, this package arrived all festively wrapped with a little “Peace On Earth” ornament on top…
… and I opened it to find this adorable silver box from Pottery Barn that reads “Good things come in small packages.” Which makes this 5’2″ gal smile.
And there was a little bit o’ sparkle going on – like fairy dust. Which all made sense when I cracked the lid to find three sweet ornaments with the hubster, the beanster, and my initials on them. So cute.
Anyone have any guesses which of these bloggers might be my secret Santa? I don’t have a clue but I love the suspense of it all!
-
Mrs. Limestone at Brooklyn Limestone
-
Michelle at 4 Men 1 Lady
-
Bryn at Bryn Alexandra
-
Emily at Emily A. Clark
-
Shelley at House of Smiths
-
Melissa at The Inspired Room
-
Janell at Isabella and Max Rooms
-
Paloma at La Dolce Vita
-
Jacin at Lovely Little Details
-
Nicole at Making it Lovely
-
Marian at Mustard Seed Interiors
-
Lauren at Pure Style Home
-
Tanya at Save the Date for Cupcakes
-
Michelle at TenJune
-
Sarah at Thrifty Decor Chick
-
Laura at You Stir Me
As for my new little ornaments, off to the tree they went! Not only the three initial ornaments but the little glittering birdie too:
Here’s our little C in action. I love that these babies aren’t breakable – so they fit right in with our paint chips and ribbons.
The red on the initials tie right into the red ribbons, and the glitter around the edges gleam like our sparkly snowflakes.
Oh and our tree has filled out quite a bit over the last few weeks. Care to guess why?
Yup, many of the ornaments on our little homemade advent calendar have been popped off the door where they were hanging…
… and onto the tree. Clara and I have had fun finding the perfect place for each one as each day goes by.
Love me some holiday traditions! Maybe I was an elf in a past life. Those little seasonal activities and crafts (like our annual calendar and our ornament advent calendar) are hardly expensive or time consuming – but they’re so much fun for the family to get into the spirit. Especially little Clara. And when you’re dreading/gearing up for days and days of cabinet sanding and priming and painting… ya gotta love a little holiday spirit in the half-torn-apart house to keep ya smiling. Maybe we’ll play Christmas music while we putty and pretend the sawdust is snow…
22 Holiday Hallway Tweaks
I warned you that I was really excited to go all out for our first “real” holiday in our new house, so it’s no surprise that I got giddy and decided to tackle an unexpected-ish space for holiday-ifaction. Was that enough hyphenated-not-real words for you? Anyway that space = the hallway. I actually switched out 22 frames (almost two dozen!) in our little hallway frame collection to make things a bit more festive. And it was free. Yeee-haw. Over the top? Maybe. But it makes us smile and was zero dollars. Holla. Let’s get on with the tour…
When you look at the hallway from a distance, the change isn’t overly obvious, which we like (one of our favorite things about the frame wall in general is that it draws people in, so you have to get closer to see what each item is really about).
But if you get a little closer you start to pick up on some of the things that we switched out (you can see most of the original frame wall art here)…
… like how the paint deck that used to hang on the pig hook was swapped with a little yarn owl ornament that I snagged on clearance after the holidays last year at Target (to the tune of 25 cents).
I also popped two old snowflake ornaments into those two shadow box frames on the left. And that clear tree in the frame on the right is a page from Martha Stewart magazine (framing pages from mags, catalogs, or calendars for your own personal enjoyment is totally fine – you just can’t profit off of those images, for example: trying to sell them as your own designs on etsy).
If you scoot a little further to the right of the wall, you’ll see a few other frames that we tweaked with new holiday-ish stuff.
The frame with the glitter ornaments and green trees is actually a Martha Stewart ad for her glitter line (also torn out of her magazine). And the blue star made up of ornaments to the right of that is a page from a West Elm catalog.
Beneath the glitter ad we have a page from Pottery Barn with some festive shakers and the frame right above our console table has some West Elm plates that say Cheers, Joy, and Peace (all good holiday reminders).
Here’s a close up of the West Elm page full of ornamets in the shape of a star. It’s my favorite:
I also framed a few more West Elm pages, like this collection of holiday mugs and ornaments (backed with a piece of green paper that we already had) and this page full of numbered and lettered plates…
… including a plate that says “Cookies for Santa.” Oh and don’t mind that carbon monoxide detector above (I’ve been meaning to stick it somewhere a bit less noticeable).
These are the frames with plexiglass and heavy duty velcro to keep them safe for Clara since they’re down at her level (more on that here). And since she loves Santa (more on that here) I figured she’d like the Santa cookies plate down where she could admire it. The verdict in her words: “I love you, Santa!” And when she walks by it, sometimes we hear her mumble “buh-bye Santa.” So sweet.
Here’s the rest of that wall from afar. See, not too obvious… until you get closer…
… and notice things like two big jingle bells that I hung in a backwards canvas (I love the raw wood frame that’s usually hidden when it’s facing the “right” way). As for how I hung the canvas backwards (which I did back when we originally hung all of these frames), I just hammered one of these little metal tooth-hook things for hanging pictures (from Michael’s) into the front (now back) of the frame so I could hang it over a nail. There’s also a photo of stacked firewood with some holiday pillows piled on top from a Pottery Barn catalog.
Now let’s move over to the other side of the wall. Here we have a bunch of holiday swaps going on.
Like the piece of cardstock that I printed with the words “Happy holidays, y’all!” with some red hearts above and below it, and a swatch of red wrapping paper that I stuck behind an already-framed peacock feather. I also slipped two small silver ornaments into a shadow box (which already had a calendar with our anniversary circled inside of it) and added another little 25 cent yarn ornament (this time it’s a bunny) above it.
In the bottom right of that arrangement I also worked in a page from West Elm full of graphic numbered ornaments with fun shapes that Clara likes on them (like a swan and a goose). She points and says “honk honk!” (every kid should have a reason to practice their goose impression, right?).
Here’s the other side of that wall with six more frame switches.
Like a Banana Republic ad (with a sweet pooch wearing a bow tie sitting under some mistletoe) and a funny Christmas sweater ornament that I taped into another backwards canvas. On the right we have a felt ornament from Target last year (which almost looks like an ornate paper cut-out when it’s framed).
I also made another little texty design that I printed out onto card stock (this one says “Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas”) and under that is an illustration of holiday cookies from Woman’s Day magazine (donated by John’s mom after I spotted it and asked if I could have the mag after she was done).
And in the top left shadow box I stuck more silver ornaments with some leftover wrapping paper as the background.
So there you have 22 quick frame switches, all of which can easily be changed back to their pre-holiday look once January rolls around. I kept all of the original art behind the new additions in each frame, so I can just put it back in front of the holiday stuff (which’ll live behind it until next Christmas when it moves forward again). Oh and for anyone wondering where we got the frames, they’re all from Ikea, Target (on clearance), or thrift stores. We just saved them up over time and actually had many of them when we moved here (they used to hang randomly in nearly every room at our first house, so we thought it would be fun to hang them en masse in our hallway instead of spreading them out again here).
Man, there’s something so satisfying about some free holiday festive-ness, especially in an often overlooked space like a hallway. Did you guys decorate any unexpected areas like a bathroom or a laundry room or a sunroom? Heck, even little trees on bedroom windowsills can be really cute. Oh yeah and on the subject of better-late-than-never holiday stuff, I spent some time making a page full of all of our seasonal/holiday projects & ideas that can easily be perused by picture. So you’ll hopefully have fun sniffing around for some last minute ideas.
You can click here to see it all and can also access it at any time by clicking the “Holiday Ideas” button on our sidebar.
Ho ho hope it helps!
Psst- We picked a winner for this week’s giveaway. Click here to see if it’s you.
