Gallery Wall Tips

Tips on hanging pictures . . .

Step One:

Cut craft paper (newspaper, etc.) to the size of your picture frames so you can visualize your wall.

Step Two:

Put toothpaste on the picture frame brackets, remove the craft paper from where you want to hang your first picture.  Hold your picture frame up to that spot and push against the wall.  This will put toothpaste marks on your wall where you need to put in the screws.

Step Three:

Continue until all frames are hanging.

Much better!  Just need the letter "D" up there under the cityscape.

Wedding Crafting

I am currently planning a wedding so naturally I'm doing a bunch of DIY projects.  Part of our wedding decor theme is chalkboards so I have had fun experimenting with different chalk lettering and fonts and creating wedding signage.

Here are some wedding signs I have made so far:

These were signs for my shower.

I also created a ceremony sign on some old recycled wood:

The most recent are my Bride and Groom signs for the wedding chairs:

I also managed to paint a sign for another friends wedding as well:

Need a hand painted sign?  Let me know, working on my own planning and craft business, look for Busy Bee coming soon!

Office DIY

I've been working hard on cleaning up and organizing my office/studio and thought I would share a little DIY.

I had an old cork board that I decided to add a chevron pattern to update it.  Super easy! I just used blue tape to tape off the design and then painted it using acrylic paint.

I also had fun taking pictures of letters for my "create" sign.  For the letters, I was spending the day with Daniel in downtown Orange and decided to take pictures of different letters from the different window signs.  Orange has a lot of cool shops and antique stores all of which have some cool typography. I then just edited the pictures and printed them in black and white.  I would really like to do this with numbers too for our wedding date.

Friday Night Tasting Party

I was inspired by an image in a magazine and the need to start out my spring break right so I decided to host a tasting party, wine for the girls and beer for the guys.  It was super fun and I had a blast preparing for it!

So to start . . . I wrapped our table with brown packing paper (found it cheap at Walmart).  This was great because I could write on the table, I traced a placemat to mark the seats and labeled them with my friends names.

I used a wine crate (5 bucks from Total Wine) for the center piece and to hoist up the cheese board.  The cork candle sticks I made previously.  I used mason jars for the beer tasting, I marked where the glasses go since I didn't have cool wooden tasting boards.

My friends brought wine and Daniel got beer from a local brewery and I labeled the tastings on some extra craft paper.

As for food we had things that were easy to snack on like cheeses, hummus, homemade kale chips, olive spread, strawberries, and crackers.

Super easy kale chips . . Mix kale pieces with olive oil and vinegar then lay in a single layer in a greased cookie sheet, sprinkle with salt. Bake about 5 minutes at 325 and then flip and cook a few minutes more. They don't keep well though so eat them all!

A small wine crate with a bag of ice in it to keep the beer cold.

Coasters made from old scrabble pieces glued to some cork paper.

It was a super fun Friday night!

  

Artwork

I've been trying to get some time to just paint things or draw a little.  Here are some recent works:

A painting for my mom for Christmas

Just experimenting with a few different techniques.

Just some decorative art for the living room.  I think it will look nicer with a good frame.  I just took one of Daniel's old paintings he didn't want, spray painted it gold.  Then I put down some painters tape and painted over it.  When I pulled off the tape some of the gold came off too and created an interesting texture.  I like it!

Homemade Coasters

So a coworker gave me this idea and it was awesome!
All you do is buy a few subway tiles from Home Depot (under a dollar each) and decoupage something on top whether it's scrapbook paper, pictures, or fabric.  Cover the tiles with around 3 coats of decoupage and then spray them with an acrylic sealer.  Then put those round felt pieces on the bottom (also from Home Depot) to make sure they don't scratch the table.

Here are some I made for my place using scraps from things I've saved from our travels combined with some scrapbooking stuff I had around:

I also made some really cool ones for my brother's girlfriend. I stole a few pictures from her Facebook of her and my brother and printed them out in black and white and decoupaged them on the tiles, they were so cute!

Christmas Decorations

Jar of cookies makes a great gift for someone who has a sweet tooth!  Here I just decoupaged some scrapbook paper on the lid to dress it up a bit.  To do this just trace the lid on the scrapbook paper, cut the paper an extra 1/4" to 1/2" depending on the size of the edge of the lid.  then cut slits along the edge up to where you traced the lid so that they will fold over the sides of the lid when you decoupage it down.

Winter coffee table centerpiece.  I made snow globes by gluing small trees and pine cones onto the lids of jars, filled the jars with fake snow and glitter and then screwed them on.  The taller one is glued onto a candle holder I found at the thrift store.  The deer is a toy from Hobby Lobby that I spray painted gold.

A garland made for my kitchen using cut up christmas cards from last year and spray painted some snowflakes I had from working in a retail store.

Celebrating Chanukah! 

Delicious vegan cookies I made for some coworkers!  I adapted this to make it Gluten Free but they weren't as pretty but still delicious.  Here is a link to the recipe . . . they are Mexican Chocolate Snicker Doodles:
http://thingsmyroommatemakes.com/2011/10/01/vegan-cookies-invade-my-blog/

Just some homemade christmas cards made from paper and Washi tape.

Kind of fun!