DIY Art: Sing to Hymn

I'm back!

After a multiple day blogging hiatus thanks to Blogger's down-time + lack of personal time, I'm back with what will hopefully be a week full of new posts! I've got a few updates to share with you around the homestead and a few other odds and ends of things to take up your precious time.

By the way, thanks for giving me your time! It's appreciated!

The first thing I wanted to share with you this week is a follow up to a project I had written about 2 weeks ago, where I mentioned I was working on hanging some pictures/art /stuff on the walls around the house.

I shared the results of some living room hangings last Tuesday (click HERE for those details), but this weekend I added a few new items to the walls of our den (which is right off of the living room). I actually started this project waaay back on April 22nd. I even teased you with this post about it.

Here is a reminder of what I was starting with. Three of the four walls of the den are filled with windows. The wall space above the piano is the one open wall area where I can really hang anything substantial. I hung this pineapple art several months ago as a filler until I decided what I wanted to do with the space.


As you can see, this one item doesn't exactly fill in the wall space. So, I removed it.

Since this room houses our piano and Joey's guitar, it serves as kind of our "music room". So, I used that theme as inspiration for the DIY artwork in the space. Here is what the wall looks like after some rearranging. Doesn't the wall space look a bit more full now compared to that picture above?


There were 5 items that I hung on the wall. The little pineapple canvas in the center I already owned. Even though I'm kind of moving away from that look, I still love this little canvas. And the pineapple is the symbol of hospitality, which I also like. So, I figured I'd use what I had on hand. The "FAITH" letters at the top were purchased at Hobby Lobby (50% off) for $14. The 3 brown picture frames I already owned, and I inserted some DIY hymn art, which was free. So, this was an inexpensive project.


Each picture frame is different. It gives the space a little more interest. Inside each frame, I inserted a copied page from our old hymnbook. I would love to be able to show some old/antique hymn pages eventually, but since I didn't want to tear the pages out of our hymnbook, I opted for copying the pages on a copy machine.



The 3 hymns I chose were all written by Charles Wesley (by coincidence). The first hymn talks about the birth of Christ - Love Divine All Loves Excelling, the second hymn about the death of Christ - Arise My Soul Arise (we sing a newer version of this song at our church and I love it), and the third about the resurrection of Christ - Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

The word "FAITH" above these songs speaks to the fact that Joey and I have both placed our faith in Jesus Christ, our only Savior.



Well, I've got one more wall down and 26 to go (or something like that). Some bedroom wall art is coming your way soon!

Long Story Short (or not)

It's story time. So, I hope you have a few minutes to spare me. Ahem...

On Friday, I mentioned that one of my goals for the weekend was to hang up some pictures/artwork over the many bare walls in our house in hopes of making the space feel more like "home". And since Joey was going to be M.I.A. all weekend, I found it to be the perfect opportunity to plan out a course of action, get the materials needed, and get to work (while listening to Disney princess music...I guess the Royal Wedding put me in the princess mood). Anyhoo...

As I mentioned, included in this "plan" was the intention of running out to local stores - Target, Hobby Lobby, Marshalls etc - to hunt for bargains, find what I was looking for in the art/pictures/frames department, and implement it. I was stoked.

Well, starting Thursday or Friday (I forget which day), our one and only car starting having major issues. Like transmission-type issues (although the transmission is actually fine). When driving the car it sounds like the inside is going to fall out onto the road and the car may break down at any moment and you're hoping no one is watching you as you loudly pitter-patter down the road at 20 mph. Not good.

With no real plan of action (yet) regarding said car, Joey exits the state for the weekend with his friends and leaves me home alone with the "car". His final words to me are as follows, "Feel free to try and drive it, but remember I won't be able to come help if you break down on the road."

Whomp. Whomp. Not encouraging.

I did make one attempt to drive the car on Saturday, but I only made it about 1/2 mile before deciding to turn around and go back home - all the while planning a course of action in my head should the car suddenly stop working in the middle of the road. Thankfully, I made it back to the driveway, but I didn't make it to any stores this weekend. Boo.

Trying to stick to the plan, I made a small attempt to hang a few items using what I had on hand. So, I'll share a few pictures with you that I took of the living room. Just keep in mind that this is still very much a work in progress. But something is better than nothing, right? Right.

Here is the picture I shared with you on Friday. It's the blank walls of the room. The other walls not shown do have some decor on them.


And here are the walls with a few additions I added this weekend. The wall space in-between the 2 windows on the left still seems a little bare, but that's intentional. I need to leave room on either side of the windows because the plan is to hang curtains (sometime soon) there. So, please use your imagination and think about what the wall would like like with curtains filling up some of the empty space. I still plan to add more decor. I'm just hesitant to add it until the curtains are up. Make sense?


Here's a close-up. The items I hung on the left wall include 2 keys from a Pottery Barn set of keys that I bought a while back, a picture frame (missing the picture that will go in it) and a plate sporting a little bird on branches. I bought the frame and plate super cheap at Marshalls a few weeks ago.


Above the swing arm lamp, I hung a picture of Joey and I from when we were dating. Yes, it's like 7-8 years old. But I love it. It's in a Pottery Barn picture frame. It's been hanging on a wall in every place we've lived since we got married. I refuse to change the picture.


Before & After (a small improvement)



Here are a few other snapshots around the living room, including some spring/summer decor I added to the bookshelves by the fireplace.


The small plate on the top shelf is also from Marshalls and coordinates with the large plate hung on the wall. The glass hurricane has some sand and beach-y items in the bottom of it.


Below is a wreath my mom made for me. It adds a spring flower vibe to the room. The little nest in the center fits with my birdie theme in the room.


I bought a bronze wreath hanger (from Target) to hang it on the door in the living room.


I hope our yard has real flowers like this someday...



So, that's my (long) story for now. I also hung some items in our den and bathroom. More to come on that as I have time. I'll also update you as I finally make it out to stores to get a few additional items I need in order to implement other projects.


Now it's your turn to tell a story. Have you hung anything on your walls recently? Are there any pictures/items that you refuse to get rid of because are you living in the past like me? Ha.

Hangin' Out

As I mentioned in my post on Wednesday, I'm planning to do some hanging this weekend - as in hanging pictures, shelves, artwork etc - on various walls throughout the house. And before I get to work nailing holes in my walls, I thought I would give you a glimpse at some of the empty wall spaces in the house. That way you can (hopefully) see the changes when I show some pictures next week.

There are various rooms throughout the house that are getting some attention. Here are just a few of them in no particular order...

The Living Room has several bare walls. When I look at just the bare walls by themselves, the room looks so empty (even though other walls in the room have stuff on them). I'm going to focus primarily on the wall space above the sectional since that is the focal point when you enter the room.


The little Den area off of the family room is going to get some new artwork as well. Buh-bye pineapple...


The recently painted walls of the gray and white bathroom are ready for adornment...


This may be a little tricky only because the gray space is pretty high and above eye level for most people. I want to be sure that pictures/art don't disappear way up there.


And the newly painted hallway/stairwell needs major help. This is definitely going to be the most challenging space. Not sure if I will get to this space over the weekend. We'll see...


There are other walls here and there throughout the house that may get included as well, but I don't have pictures of them (sorry).

When I started on this project over a week ago, I pulled out all my picture frames and things I already owned to try and sort through what I wanted to keep, donate, throw away or change (spray paint maybe?).


In addition, I got out some other odds and ends of things like little shelves and artwork I already owned. What didn't fit on the dining room table spilled onto the floor.



The part that may take forever is actually sorting through and printing pictures I want to place in the frames. I have a million photos stored on my computer that I have never printed (shame on me). But I figure that even if I don't have the picture to go inside the frame just yet, I can at least get the frame hung. Taking the frame off the wall to quickly insert a picture is the easy part anyway. I just want to get the general layout of everything squared away.

So, wish me luck. I hope not to disappoint you all.

Yours Truly,
Princess Katherine (with a "K")

DIY: Shell Art

I mentioned yesterday that I DIY'd the shell art that is hanging in the silver frames in the dining room, and I just wanted to follow up really quickly and show you how fast, cheap, and easy-peasey this little project was!


I came up with the idea out of nowhere while wandering around Hobby Lobby. They had a section of the store that had seashell-type items for sale. I actually wanted to use 2 white sand dollars, but the few left were broken. I also thought about sea stars, but I think they would be too thick for the frames I was using. So, instead I purchased a little 4-pack of these shells for $2.99.


After scooping the shells of the rack, I moved a few aisles down to the scrapbooking section of the store and found paper that looked like sand. Cost was something like $0.29 per sheet. I bought 2 sheets of paper to be safe.

At home, I gathered my supplies, including the frames I already owned and gorilla glue we had on hand. I took apart the frames and removed the cardboard stuffing that sits inside to fill the space behind the picture. The cardboard's not needed since the shells were thick and took up the space.


I then took the glass and spent all of about 10 seconds tracing the glass onto the back of the paper. Turns out I only needed one piece of paper instead of two. Better safe than sorry, right?


I laid the shells out on the paper, just to be sure I like the look and spacing, and then dabbed gorilla glue on the back of them and stuck 'em to the paper. I left it for about 1 minute to be sure it was bonded tight (gorilla glue works fast).


Finally I was able to re-assemble the frames with the new artwork. The space was a little tight between the glass and the backing of the frame, but I got it to squeeze in there without breaking the glass.



So, there you have it. DIY art for about $3.50 and 5 minutes of time (plus shopping). Not too bad, eh?


This project leans a bit toward the Summer season of decorating rather than Spring. If I wanted to do more of a spring vibe with this project, I would have glued some dried flowers or something on different background paper. But I'm lazy and didn't want to redo the project in a few weeks. So, that's that.

I hope to create some more art for other spaces in the home very soon. I need to get my creative thinking cap on!

Have you done any DIY art projects around the house recently? If so, do share!

Smart Art

It's not very often that I find artwork that I completely fall in love with the moment I lay eyes on it. In fact, generally speaking, I'm very indecisive about art and have no clue where to begin when it comes to purchasing art for my home. And this can be any type of artwork - from prints and photographs to paintings or signs or .... you get the idea. And on top of that, you have to think about things like size - how big (or small)? what color? what frame? which room do I place it in?

Ugh.

So many options.

And on top of all that, there's the big question: What is the PRICE???
Artwork can be super expensive or super cheap or anywhere in between. And personally, I'm not one to fork out a ton of cash for art. So, I'm always looking for inexpensive ways to buy or create artwork that doesn't look "cheap".

So, that leads me to my current story. I was poking about Hobby Lobby (one of my favorite places in the world) the other day, when I happened to see that one of their sale items for the week was artwork and frames. Thinking to myself, "I am going to need to fill all these newly painted walls with something", I wandered over to the art area and started thumbing through prints that they sell (most of which I would never hang in my house. ever.). Well, within a few minutes, I came across a print that stopped me dead in my tracks. I loved it. I wanted to marry it. I wanted to take it home to be mine forever. And given my general indecisiveness about art that I mentioned above, I realized quickly that this piece was a must buy.

One problem: it needs a frame. Frameless art is like homeless art.

So next, I wandered over to the frame section and started hunting - unsure if I could buy ready-made frame, or if it needed custom framing, I meandered through the aisles looking. Certain of my unsureness (is that a word?), the Hobby Lobby Helper asked me what I was looking for and I replied "the most inexpensive frame that I can use for this print". He got out his handy dandy tape measure (not "measuring tape" as my husband reminds me) and told me the print + mat was 18 inches by 24 inches (decent size) and I could pick from a whole wall of ready-to-buy (cheap) frames. Hooray.

Then I had to decide - black frame? brown frame? white frame? something else?

So, I pulled out multiple options, laid them down, and laid the picture on them to see what I liked best. It came down to the black frame or a rustic grayish/brown wood frame. The decision was difficult. The black frame was more streamlined, modern, and could be used in almost any room. But the rustic grayish/brown frame spoke to me - "buy me. buy me." It matched the beauty and color of the print so well. And so I went with my gut, and bought it.

Now to reveal the purchases.

First, the print. I love water. I love boats. I love sepia tones. The picture has all 3.


Second, the frame. You can see it is a mix of browns, grays, blacks. Rustic. Like old barn wood.

Third, the print in the frame. See how well the tones of the wood match the tones of the print? Priceless. I think it's beautiful.


The Price? Keep in mind the following was 50% of the original price.

Print: $9.50
Frame: $22.50
Tax: $1.76
Total: $33.74

That's right. 30 bucks. I was grinning from ear to ear.

I can't wait to hang this in my home. I'm still deciding where to hang it though. Probably either the downstairs hall or the dining room or the downstairs office/3rd bedroom. I'll make the final decision once we finish painting the walls in these rooms.

So what do you think? Was it a steal of a deal? or a bust?

Any art you've bought recently that you love? Do share!