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!

Homemade Halloween

This year we decided we would host our first Halloween party in our New House.  I set to work on holiday decorations. I didn't want it to be too cheesy or childish so I decided on a goth theme.

I made a wreath with a raven which was super easy with the help of Hobby Lobby:

I also painted a few wooden plaques to place around the kitchen:

I also added a few little details here and there such as paper mâché skulls and some bottle decals that I bought and attached to bottles and mason jars.

I made a banner for a wall in our kitchen that was pretty bare using brown paper bags, spray paint and stencils, and some string.

The last thing that I did turned out awesome but sadly I didn't take a photo.  I covered my table with a cream table cloth and layered a spiderweb runner over it (you can see it in the picture with the plaques). I then lined up about six empty wine bottles that I had removed the labels and then inserted white candles in the openings.  I then lit them and turned on the fan for a little which made them drip down the bottle.  At night I put other random candles around and the effect was pretty nice.

Succulents

I love succulents! They are so pretty and because they have shallow roots they can be planted in almost anything. Here I took a pumpkin and cut out a whole then planted my succulents in the pumpkin.



I've also planted them in coffee cups, jars, cigar boxes, and I've cut holes in books and planted them in those (make sure you put plastic in the book so it doesn't rot.)

Here is my coffee cup succulent gift I made:


Here is a book that I planted a succulent in:


Succulents make such great gifts and they are inexpensive and easy to work with.

More Artwork for the Bedroom

So, again I was in the mood to create another painting for our bedroom and found another old canvas that my fiancé had from art school. I decided to create an abstracted landscape inspired by our trip to Portland. I used my favorite material, newspaper to create the buildings and added some paint, metallic sharpies, and colored pencils to create my cityscape. I like how it turned out and it adds a little more color to our bedroom.

Labor Day BBQ

So this past labor day weekend we decided to have some friends over for a Barbecue. I took this opportunity to experiment with decor. Since it was a Barbecue I thought I would keep it casual, so I covered our dining table with newspaper. It looked cool and made clean up really easy! I then went with a black, white, and red color scheme. I put my plastic silverware in a mason jar and painted a wine bottle with chalkboard paint so I could write a message or doodle. I also put some marshmallows in a mason jar which turned out cute. I also took my serving tray from a previous post and used it as a sign. It was all quick and easy and looked somewhat put together.

Artwork for the bedroom

So our walls are in desperate need of artwork and pictures so I set out to create something for our bedroom. I found some old canvases in our office from when my fiancé was at art school. I was just messing around with some oops paints I bought from Home Depot, painting things that came to mind. I ended up with a cool tree. I then took some vinyl letters I got from staples for making posters and spelled out a song lyric from one of our favorite songs. Then I rolled some white paint over the whole thing. I peeled off the letters and decided it looked a little plain so I added some more paint and added another tree. When I paint its more about the process, the journey to the finished product, luckily I liked the finished product and it is hanging in our bedroom.

If you are not much of a painter, you could always buy a cheap painting from a thrift shop and add letters and some paint to create a similar effect.

Candles and Corks

So I have a surplus of corks due to my many friends and family who are avid wine drinkers and I'm trying to come up with fun and crafty ways to use them.

Here are my new dining table candles:

They were crazy cheap to make, the large vases were each a dollar at the dollar tree.  The tiny cups were each a dollar at Michaels and I happened to have the candles and corks at home.  Pretty and simple!