Pinteresting-The Craft Version and The Pinterest Challenge

Update-I originally posted this a few weeks ago but I'm re-posting it today for the Young House Love/Bower Power Pinterest Challenge. 

A few weeks ago I decided to 'pinter' some art work.  I made this picture one night while my husband was watching some sort of sport downstairs.  He never even saw me in action.

I got the idea for this from here.  Here is where I pinned it.  Essentially you just paint or draw branches with brown marker or paint and then paint circles on the branches as leaves.  I used some old acrylic paint I had lying around.

I was not 100% happy with this when I finished.  Once I put it in the frame, I liked it better (fun fact-you can make most bad art look decent by framing it).  I like how it looks from far away but not so much from up close.  Fortunately, I usually only look at it from far away.  So for now, it's a keeper.  I can always re-frame something else when I get sick of it.

The second thing I made didn't come from a specific pin.  I had seen a lot of people use paint sample chips (cards from Lowe's, Home Depot) to make art work.  So I thought I'd give it a try.  After some trial and error I went with these hearts in varying shades of blue which I taped onto a piece of white paper.  Then I framed them in this dollar store frame. 

So if I end up hating it in a few weeks there will be no big monetary loss.  (Free paint chips+ $1 frame=$1).

Here's how it looks all together.

Have you pintered any art for your house?

UPDATE 2-So I'm actually still liking my tree painting.  It's growing on me, so I think it will stay up there for awhile.  Now I need to re-pinter some art for the basement since my first attempt was a failure.  You can check that one out here.

Craft Room Renovations-Part 3-The Photo Wall

As I mentioned before, I have recently been really inspired by the blog Young House Love.  I'm kind of obsessed with it.

I knew I needed more wall art/photos for my craft room and when I saw this on YHL, I knew I wanted to do something similar.


photo from Young House Love

This is actually from the nursery at their old house but I wanted to do something like it with some photos and miscellaneous items that I had.  I bought some inexpensive (and on sale) white frames from Michael's and then set about arranging them and figuring out which of my photos and other items I wanted to put in the frames.  I actually used all stuff that I already had (well except the pic of Hobie which I had to get printed).  Mine is a mixture of wedding photos/mementos, a postcard from our honeymoon, a pic of Hobie, a couple other random postcards and a greeting card I thought was pretty.

B helped me with the hanging.  Hobie, of course, just stared out the window.

I ended up slightly moving all the frames a little after they were hung the first time.  I started to freak out about their spacing.  I could see myself lying on the bed in there staring up at the frames and thinking about how they were slightly uneven or crooked or what not and thus making myself crazy.  So I tried to make it as even as I could.

I'm sure some of them are still uneven and not perfectly spaced from each other but I am very happy with the results.

So I thought this ended up being a good project.  It was pretty inexpensive and the worst part was hanging all the photos (which I had help with).  What do you think?  Have you done anything similar?  Would you like me to send you a giant black and white photo of Hobie and his tennis ball for your wall?

Making Stuff is Fun....Old School Edition

And by Old School, I mean the tenth grade.  The other day when I went to visit L-Fab after her toe surgery at my parent's house, something dreadful happened.  My mom forced me to take a bunch of stuff from my old bedroom to my house.  I have been avoiding this for years.  But she wouldn't let me leave without taking several boxes of stuff and my two guitars.  (That's right, I have 2 guitars and know approximately 2 chords on the guitar.  I really tried to learn multiple times in college, it just didn't take.)  However, I found some wonderful stuff in these boxes...photo collages, books and of course the best find....my tenth grade art work.

So here we have two wonderful pieces from Art 2, aka tenth grade art circa 1996...

Ok so this is a picture of my parent's house.  Why is it blue and purple?  My parent's house is not blue and purple.  I guess we were supposed to use some weird color scheme and I picked the one that involved blue, green and purple (cool colors??? IDK).  I mean I do love purple but this is just a little strange looking.  But look up there above the garage...that's my old bedroom. 

This next picture is a real winner.  It is my version of a butterfly........

...featuring an actual stick of butter with butterfly wings.  Deep right?  Yeah I'm not so sure.  But I do remember thinking this picture was super cool.  I like the wings and the amazing background that gets darker and darker as you go up.

So those were pretty much  my two masterpieces of the year.  I didn't take any formal art classes after that in school.  There was no time with yearbook, typing and calculus and stuff.

So what do you think of my wonderful tenth grade art work?

Should I have gone on to Art 3 instead of being on the yearbook staff?

Does anyone think my mom should want to keep these precious gems at her house?

Is it really that hard to learn the guitar?