DIY: Subway Art Frame

My roommate's birthday was a few weeks back. I already had part of the gift planned - some really cool Stila eyeshadow and a few other make-up things, which I love and knew she would too. But I wanted to do something a bit more personal since she's so dear to me.

I came across this darling Subway art over at Kiki & Company. It was just the thing I was looking for!

Side note - so my friends and I always call patterns for projects "recipes" and I've had a hard time not doing that lately but I just can't help it! So...

Recipe:

You will need a blank wooden frame, acrylic paint (I used Apple Barrel by Plaid White and True Teal), scrapbook paper, white cardstock, Krylon Triple Thick Crystal Clear Glaze, sponge brush, and craft glue (I used Aleene's Quick Dry Tacky Glue).

Step 1:  

Remove the glass (or in my case plastic) from the frame.  Prime frame with 2 coats of white paint. Let dry thoroughly in between layers. Then paint 2 coats of your desired color (also drying well between layers) and let dry. 

When it is completely dry, spray the entire frame with the Krylon Triple Thick Crystal Clear Glaze. Be sure to do this in a well ventilated area like outside (my roommates always gets mad when I do this in the house). Let the frame dry really well before handling again - ask how I know about that!

Step 2:

While that is drying, you can pick out your Subway Art for the frame. Like I mentioned, mine came from Kiki & Company. You can also do a search for "Free Subway Art" on Google for more ideas.

Funny thing was that I was trying to use the red and teal design on Kiki Creates. I didn't realize until it printed that my printer was out of magenta ink. Luckily, I love the way it turned out. To make it fit in my frame, I scaled it down to size in Photoshop and printed from there. I printed it on white cardstock to help the colors really stand out and make it sturdier. 

Step 3: 

This is my favorite part of any project - embellishing! I chose to make some 3D flowers and leaves with the colored cardstock. I love it because it is two-sided! I used my Silhouette to cut them and then glued them to the frame with the craft glue. You can find some ideas to make handmade flowers on my Favorite Flower Tutorials Round-up.

The best part of this project is that you can decide how you embellish the frame. You can use ribbons, buttons, stickers or vinyl cut outs. Personalize it and make it your own.

 

It turned out perfectly and she loved it! The best part of giving it to her was that I could finally take the sign off the craft room door warning her to stay out!

Fabric Scrap and Remnant Ideas

I may be a bit of a fabric hoarder. Okay well maybe more than a bit - I have an entire drawer in my craft room just for scraps. Plus a bag under the desk! For some reason, I just can't bring myself to part with them. I mean you never know when you might need them, right? Even the weird colored upholstery fabric scrap - that could come in handy too. BUT I'm supposed to be organizing my craft room and need to sort through all that stuff.

If you are sitting there wondering what to do with your pile of scraps other than toss them, I've got some great things in store for you! In all my scrap hoarding, I have managed to accumulate quite a collection of scrappy projects around my house.

These are some of my favorites:

The bow on this vase is made entirely out of scrap fabric.

To make it: make a tiny cut at the edge of the fabric about an inch and a half on each side and then rip down the length of the fabric where you made those cuts. They end up about 1 1/2" by 20". Ripping it gives it a nice textured look - kind of raw and unfinished. Then cut any really long threads that are left hanging.
I did this on about 3 different pieces of fabric and then tied them together in a big bow on the vase.

These easy wall art are all made out of leftover scraps from the quilt my mother made for my living room. It is Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 if you are interested in getting it.

To make: You will need embroidery hoops in varying sizes. These are available at most craft stores. Lay your fabric wrong side facing up and then center the embroidery hoop on the fabric. With a fabric marker trace about one inch outside the hoop. This will let you fit the fabric nicely inside the hoop. Then cut out the circle you traced. Take apart the embroidery hoop frame, center the fabric inside and then slide the pieces back together and tighten the top screw. You can cut off any excess fabric after you get it inside. Finish it by embellishing it anyway you like. I added buttons and felt flowers to some of mine.

The yo-yo on this project is a simple way to use up fabric scraps and can be used in so many different ways. This frame is on a shelf in my craft room and I love the bit of cheer it brings into the room.
You can find pre-made yo-yos at the craft store sometimes, but this is about using up your stash right? I love Positively Splendid and they have great instructions on how to make your own here: Fabric Yo-Yo Tutorial with Printable Template. They also have some other great tutorials and fun things, so stop by and check them out.


Some other great fabric scrap ideas are linked up here:
Anthro-Inspired Necklace
Favorite Flower Tutorials Round-up

That should give you some great ways to help bust that scrap stash lingering in your craft room and hopefully I can bust some of mine before the month is over!

Living Room Gallery Wall

I knew that I wanted to decorate the living room yellow and grey in my new place months before I even started apartment hunting. This is my favorite part of the living room. Honestly though, the rest of the room couldn't get more yellow and grey unless I got a yellow or grey couch. I was working on getting one, but I figured out how to clean my couch here so the grey couch will have to wait. I would love to paint the walls a nice soft yellow or light grey, but that too is out since we rent. 

This is about what I could do and I am so excited about it!

The quilt is a project I found on Happy Together here using Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 collection of fabrics shown here. I convinced my mother that it was the only thing that would do for a birthday present this year. I LOVE it. I think it is the most beautiful quilt I own. The pillows are from Ikea and very affordable. I love how they tie in the couch color with the yellow and grey theme.

The gallery wall is inspired by many that I saw on Pinterest. Search gallery wall and you'll see what I'm talking about. I used a few frames from Ikea (love that place!) and put in black & white pictures from an old Ansel Adams calendar I happened to have. It was really old - like from 2002! (I'm a bit of a hoarder.) The top left frame has lyrics to a song. It's super tiny writing but I managed to fit the whole song in. There is also a quote from e.e. cummings and the bottom right frame says, "Be Awesome Today." Those are all printed on cute scrapbook paper. The "S" is from Michael's, and covered in many, many coats of yellow spray paint, then hung with a black & white polka dot ribbon. I used my Silhouette to cut various words and phrases out of vinyl and used those to fill in the spaces around the frames.

I love using vinyl to decorate in the apartment. It doesn't damage the walls and adds a lot of style when you aren't allow to paint. I almost always get my vinyl from Expressions Vinyl and for indoor use order the removable indoor vinyl. There are so many colors and styles to choose from I could really cover the whole house in it! I'm not being paid to say that, I just love their selection, great customer service and fast shipping.

Family Name Art

Yesterday was my Grom's birthday, that would be grandma to most of you. We are taking her out tonight to celebrate and I wanted to make her something very special. Her house has been in the process of being remodeled and I found this wonderful frame at Ikea when we were on a trip there for decorating inspiration. It's fun having two places to redecorate. Pictures of our new place will be coming soon! I've been so busy with packing and moving, then unpacking and organizing that I almost forgot about making her present. But yesterday, my mother was posting pictures for everyone of all the happenings over at their place and a light bulb went off - Grom's present! So, I put everything else aside and got to work figuring out what to do for her and came up with this:

I wanted to make sure that it would match their new decor and that it wouldn't just be another piece of art to hang on the wall. I used the pictures that my mother had posted as color inspiration, especially this wall hanging she made:

(don't you just love it?)

  
The details: The background on the right and left sides are newsprint scrapbook paper and the middle is a green print from the Luxury Stack of Premium Stack scrapbook paper. On the left I attached a white cardstock daisy and on the right I used a white scroll font stickers to spell "Fish," the family name. I printed the quote on the green paper in LD Old Glory font. "Being a family means you are part of something very wonderful. It means you will love and be loved for the rest of your life. No matter what."

I think it will go wonderfully with the new decor and more importantly, I think my Grom will love it!

Crazy with Crayons

If you have been on Pinterest, you have probably seen a lot of art similar to this. I am pretty sure every person on there has pinned it.

These are plain artist's canvases, I didn't buy anything fancy - whatever was on sale at Michael's. With this one, I used three 24 packs of crayons minus the black, white, brown and gray. I arranged them by color to make sure they would fit on the canvas and lined them up like the rainbow. Then I used my glue gun to glue them all onto the canvas. Next, I covered a huge area with newspaper - very important! I borrowed my mom's heat gun (similar to a blow dryer but it gets much hotter and has a more concentrated flow of air) and very slowly started melting the crayons. I found the best method was to hold it at a 45 degree angle above the canvas to better direct the flow of the wax and eliminate the overspray. I would stop periodically and let the wax re-harden and then start again to get different patterns.

On this canvas, I used a straight razor to remove the paper from all of the crayons and assorted them in a random pattern with some spaces in between. I wanted a more abstract look with this one. I followed basically the same steps as above but had to be more careful about melting the crayons themselves too much because there was no paper to protect them. I noticed that if I held the heat gun on them for too long, they would start to warp and I wanted them to maintain the look of a crayon.

After making these two, I went to the back to school sales and stocked up on crayons because I have so many ideas of how to do different pictures and patterns with them.