A Baby Girl Nursery, Pinterest Style - Part 2

In today's post I am going to focus on two things I did for the walls in my daugther's room, who which by the way is of course waking up from her nap early because I sat down to write a post :-)  I think they have radar.  Anyway, aside from the collage above her crib which I featured in my first post, I didn't have any thing for her walls so I turned to Pinterest to find some things to make.

Here was my inspiration:

Original from It's doable...Crafts, food and life.

Originally from Literally Inspired

Let's start with the flower project on top.  I thought this looked really cool and I also liked it because you can choose what ever color scrapbook paper you want so it was really easy to customize to the room.  Again, this project was done pre-Pin or Pass so I don't have before photos, but I went to the craft store and bought a canvas and about 10 sheets of scrapbook paper.  After coupons and sales I probably spent about $10 on this and I didn't need all that scrapbook paper, probably only about 5 sheets total.

I followed the instructions the original Pinner provided and I started by painting my canvas with a silver background color.  While it dried, I cut all the leaves out.  Once the leaves were cut I laid them out in the pattern to get an idea of where to place them.  From there, I used craft glue to glue the leaves on.  This is where I went wrong.  The glue was a little too heavy and some of the leaves didn't lay as flat as they should have.  Once all the leaves were on and dry, I went over it with a coat of Matte finish Modge Podge.  This made the bumps in the leaves from the glue stick out even more!  You can't see it when it's hanging on the wall, but if you look closely you can see them.

Here's my end result:

 
If you look closely, you can see what I am talking about with some of the leaves being bumpy.  I also wasn't really happy with the way the flower itself came together.  The original Pinner got her leaves in a much tighter pattern and I think it looked nicer.  While this project was easy and inexpensive, I don't LOVE my end result, so if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't!  I give this pin a PASS.

My second DIY wall art project was much more successful.  For this one, I took another canvas and photo of Julianna.  I got a poster size print from Walmart for $5!  I got it about an inch or two larger than the canvas all the way around the perimeter of the picture.  I painted the edges of the canvas hot pink (of course!) and used some craft glue to glue the picture down.  The graft glue worked fine for this project because photo paper is a lot heavier than scrapbook paper.  I glued the photo to the canvas and used an exacto knife to trim the excess off around the edges.  I used a sanding block to smooth the edges.  I know I thought it sounded crazy too but that's what the original Pinner said to do to clean up the edges so I tried it and it worked!  From there, I used Modge Podge on top to give it a textured look.  The original Pinner recommended another product to go over top, but Modge Podge worked fine for me.  Here my end result:

I was happy with the way this one came out!  Of course it doesn't hurt that she's a doll :-)  For less than $10 this project was complete.  It was easy and came out as expected, this one gets a PIN!

Up next...in the final part of my baby girl nursery series, I'll review her dresser re-do and her tutu table!  Stay tuned.

Tell me, what do you think so far?

Making a Picture Frame Collage

As I've said in previous posts...I LOVE PICTURES!  My house is covered in pictures of my family but sometimes you can end up with too many frames lying around so I had to move my picture collection to the walls.  Hanging one frame here and there just wasn't going to work so I decided a picture frame collage was the perfect solution.  

I found inspiration in several places.  Here, at the fabuloushomeblog.com, there were a lot of ideas but in my opinion, they were a little too uniform.  Don't get me wrong, they all look nice, but I was looking for something a little more creative and different.  These were way too organized for how I'm rollin' these days, I guess you could call my life organized chaos :-)

Anyway, I really liked the way this pinner used different types of frames, not all the same and not all hung in perfect lines.  The shutters were a little too country for the style of my home, so I did my own variation.  

I bought frames from Hobby Lobby, Michael's and JoAnn Fabrics.  I pretty much went where ever they were selling for 50% off or where I had a coupon.  Here's my picture frame collage that now hangs in my living room.  

I spent less than $30 in new picture frames including the large one in the middle.  I had three frames to start.  I really like the way it came out, so the idea of a picture frame collage is a PIN for me! 

But as our family is growing, I'm really debating on whether or not I should add more frames around the large frame in the center.  There is enough space that I could fit some 4 x 6 frames. What do you think?  Should I add more to my picture frame collage or leave it as is?  

DIY Wall Art - What a Difference A Day Makes

Everything I do from Pinterest is mainly for my family in some way shape or form even though they may not realize it when it comes in the form of a DIY wall art project :-).  When I saw this project I thought it was a really cute way to showcase the history and making of our family as it is today.  I found the original idea on Sweet Little Loving's.

Now, I am by no means a graphic designer but I used Microsoft Publisher to lay my picture out.  I could be wrong but I think creating this in a simple Word document might be difficult as you really need to make sure that things line up properly.  Any way, in Publisher I turned on the grid and ruler function.  I selected three fonts, Castellar for the numbers, Clipper Script for the names and Modern No. 20 for the sentence at the bottom.  

Although I really like the lines she used on each side of her names, I couldn't get mine to look as nice so I left them off.  I also couldn't turn my writing the way she did with the word "day" in the last sentence so I just made it blue to highlight it a bit.  From there, I put a border around the entire thing and printed it on resume paper.  

Here's my end result!

 If I had to do over again, I'd twist the leg of one of my graphic designer friends and have them help me lay this out so I could have the lines the way the original poster did next to everyone's names.  I'd also add the detail to the word "day" as the original poster did.  But for just having basic graphic design skills and it just being a quick DIY project, I'm ok with the way it came out.

As for supplies, I had the resume paper and the frame was on sale at Michael's for $6.  So, I did this whole project for $6, it was relatively easy and not too time consuming.  Best of all, it gave me another piece of inexpensive DIY wall art to add to my living room so this project gets a PIN.  

And now that you all know my birthday, I'll be expecting gifts :-)  Just kidding...up next, Spring cleaning is just around the corner so I'm going to tackle my Microfiber couch and try to get the stains out with DIY cleaning post I found on Pinterest. Organizing with Pinterest ideas is upcoming too so stay tuned!  If you haven't already please subscribe to Pin or Pass so you don't miss any of my posts!   

A Fun Way to Hang Your Picture Frames

If you're anything like me, I have a million pictures all around my house.  I LOVE pictures!  So when I saw this idea originally from Pottery Barn, I had to give it a try.

Now, Pottery Barn sells these for $24.00 each!  No way was I paying that, so I went to Hobby Lobby, with my 40% off coupon in hand and found my own.  I picked two distinctly different knobs just to jazz it up a bit but you could use two of the same if you don't want to mix it up.  If you don't have a Hobby Lobby, most home improvement centers have knobs you could use.

I bought two picture frames from Michael's that had the ribbon already attached.  They were on sale for 40 or 50% off so they were only a few dollars each.  It would be easy to attach your own rope, ribbon or chain if you had picture frames already that you wanted to use.

I had to enlist the help of my husband to install these.  I was thinking you'd just screw them in the wall and be done with it, but no.  If you are hanging your pictures on a part of your wall that doesn't have a stud behind it, you'll need to use a toggle hook to put these up.  If you have specific questions about how to do that, email me and I can ask Chris (my husband).

Here's the end result, two beauties hanging in my bathroom!

The door knobs were around $7 with coupons and the frames were under $10 for both.  They were relatively easy to install if you have someone that knows how to use a toggle hook :-) so this project gets a PIN for being easy, inexpensive and producing a good final product!

Easy DIY Wall Art - Recycled Wood and Some Fabric

Several posts ago I shared a pin that I gave a big PASS to, called DIY wall art with your welcome mat.  If you missed that post, check it out but here's a quick reminder of the end result...yikes!

DIY wall art gone bad!

As I mentioned in the original post, I spent more than I would have liked to on the supplies for this project so when it came out terrible I started looking through my pins to see how I could recycle the supplies.  I found several pins that I got inspiration from so I incorporated pieces of each to come up with my latest project.

Home Design Pins

The New England Southerner

The original pins came from two sites, Home Design Pins and The New England Southerner.  Here are the pictures of my inspiration. I think both of these pins look great so I went out and got some fabric to cover the wood from my DIY wall art project that bombed!

For $8 from Joann Fabrics, I got enough fabric to cover both pieces of wood.  I ironed the fabric, placed the wood on it and stapled it into place.  If you've never covered anything before, it is fairly easy you just need to make sure that you don't have any bumps in the fabric and then wrap what ever you are covering similar to a present!  That may not be the "right" way to do it, but that's how I do and it works just fine, LOL!

Here's how it came out.  At first I debated about whether or not to add photos so I hung up the covered pieces without photos and lived with it for a few days.  You can see what I decided and I have to say, I love it!

So for $8 I revived my dead project, recycled some materials and created something I really like.  It was quick and easy and gave me a great place to highlight my kids' pictures.  I think putting the photos on the fabric really helps them pop and stand out as a focal point of the room.  Both of these original pins get a big PIN from me!

Now, last but not least...should I put lights over them like Home Design Pins did?  Tell me what you think!

Up next...a jumbo ruler growth chart!

DIY Wall Art With Your Welcome Mat

Since moving into our new home just a little over a year ago, I've been going room by room focusing on painting, decorating and improving our space.  Anyone who has ever bought a new house knows how expensive those first few years can be so I turned to Pinterest for some DIY inspiration.

I found this pin from Our Family Four and I was IN LOVE with the original pinner's end result.  It looked unique and it fit perfectly with the room I was focused on.  The pin had fairly detailed instructions so I thought it would be an easy project.   

Photo from Our Family Four's blog post

I bought a mat from Target on clearance for $7,  two pieces of wood from Lowe's for around $30 and then I used stain and spray paint we already had at home.  So I it was roughly $40 to start.  A little more than I'd typically spend on a DIY stuff but I loved the project so much I didn't mind. 

My husband stained the wood and taped off the edges for me.  Then I placed the mat in the middle and sprayed away!  I let it dry in between each coat and did 4 coats total. I was so excited to pull the mat back and see the end result...imagine my disappointment when it look TERRIBLE!  

The lines were not clean, the paint had smudged in places and overall the pattern of the mat just wasn't has nice as the original pinner's.  I sited heavy coats of paint and my mat pattern as the problem in my first stab at this project.

Determined to have this in my living room, I invested in a new mat, another $20 at Target.  I flipped the boards over and taped them off again.  Before starting, I went back to the original blog and read the directions again.  In my first attempt, I missed that the original pinner had taken an exacto knife and cleaned up the mat.  If you take a close look at your rubber mats you'll see that there is excess plastic throughout the lines of the design and it is jagged in places. When using it as a stencil it would make the lines less clean.  

I sat down with an exacto knife and trimmed all the excess plastic!  I can't even tell you how long this took...let's just say it's hours off of my life that I am never getting back LOL!  Anyway, again, I was vested in making this come to life so I went at it again.

This time, I did four light coats of spray paint and allowed more drying time in between.  I let it dry over night before I removed the mat.  I pulled back the mat and was yet again disappointed.  It was better than the first attempt but still not good enough for my living room wall. 

You can see even after all my exacto work, the lines still weren't overly clean and despite the added drying time, paint still smudged. Overall it just didn't look that impressive. I spent a lot of time and money on this project.  It was time consuming and after two failed attempts, I was out of wood and had to give up. So, even though I absolutely LOVED the original pinner's end result, I have to give this pin a PASS.  

In future posts, I'll recycle the wood and mat into other projects I seen on Pinterest.  Stay tuned!

From our family to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!