Copy Cat Art

I love pinterest. Craft ideas, recipes, fashion, gardening tips, interior design ideas and this..

lots of this...

My mom was was getting rid of this little yellow vase so I took it home. 

It's been in our laundry room pantry ever since. I wanted to add some inspirational pieces of art around the house but I've been struggling to find an alternative to big cursive wall decals. (Not hating, just wanted something more low key)

Glass paint would be best obviously but I buy craft supplies at random when I find good deals so I try to work with what I have. I didn't know which of these mediums would work best on glass so I did a test on the bottom.

The sharpie was hardest to get off (surprise!) so I got to use the easiest one! Yay!

How-to:

1. Choose a design
2. Draw away! (the glass rubbed clean with 409 for fixing mistakes)
3. 2 coats of clear spray gloss

I added little dots of the gold paint in those little circles on top and bottom before I sprayed :)

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Another thing I like to look at and pin is art. I love floral patterns and prints like these:

I had a blank canvas sitting around for months so I put some floral and printing together:

I'm sure I will do a few more projects like this soon. Christmas is coming up and I love giving handmade gifts :)

Happy Friday to all!

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Moroccan Wall Stencil

I've seen moroccan wall stenciling all over pinterest for a while now and I wanted to pull off this look somewhere in our house. I first thought I would do our half bath but I really don't think I have the patience required to do a whole room.. or a whole wall for that matter. I wanted to get this done quickly and without too much elbow grease.

Our kitchen looked like this when we moved in :

The whole house was painted white. I left several rooms white but I like color so I went with these:

<< living room color - dining room color>>

I left the opposite wall in the kitchen white but I wanted to do the stenciling across the top of the cabinets. It would have been much easier to leave it white and paint the lines with the blue (It looks closer to blue in real life) but I thought the opposite way would look better.

I painted the color when I painted the dining room. Then I printed out a stencil from someone off pinterest >> I didn't follow the directions on the stencil because I wanted to create a "double line" look. I traced it onto cardboard, cut it out and taped a tiny level onto the front. I don't know how much it helped in keeping everything straight but something worked! I used the paper cut out for corners and awkward spots.

On the end of the left side I painted a simple white line down the seam. On the right, the end joins with a white wall so the line wasn't needed.

All in all, I think it took about three days total for tracing and painting. This was the thickest paint I could find but that blue is super rich so after one coat it looked pretty uneven. I ended up doing two coats.. Alex said he liked it and I told him he had better like it because that's how it's going to look for a while!

Pretty kitchen = Happy girl

Wedding Arch

Alex and I got married at our church and to decorate the sanctuary for our wedding, we wanted to make a flowered arch to stand under. We started with a basic metal rod arch and flowers from Michael's and a bunch of clearance christmas lights from walmart.

Alex bought and cut strips of white lattice from home depot and attached them to the arch with clear zip ties. (cutting off the excess of course) Then I attached the lights to the arch, weaving them around the lattice. Once that was done, I attached the flowers by snipping them short and just twisting them around the lattice and lights. Most silk flowers have wire stems.

To keep it steady, Alex made stands using wood boards and metal rods. (See, this arch came with stakes for feet because it was originally intended to be put in the ground.) And, Voila!

After the wedding, we kept the arch up at our apartment until we moved. When we did, we didn't really have a place for it and truthfully, it's sort of big to keep as a piece of every day furniture. Besides I wanted to grow something on it..

So these days, the lights are strung up between the shed and a big tree in our backyard. The arch has a vine growing on it and I recently planted morning glories (not pictured) that are growing fast! I have a project going with the flowers that will come in a future post. (If I EVER finish it..) 

Frames Collage

About six months ago we rearranged a few rooms of our house leaving a big empty wall in the main room. I was really inspired by THIS blog and wanted to create something similar. My mom recently gave me a bunch of old family photos so those needed a home as well.

These are just some prints that we liked.

School photo of my mom and Navy photo of my poppy (her dad)

Picture of Alex on our honeymoon, candy hearts in a heart taken by Joey at our wedding, and a picture of my mom and her older sister Vivian at ages 2 and 3

Post WWII Family photo (my mom's the baby)

Engagement photo <3

I made this around the beginning of our relationship (it was in a little card) and we've had it up in every place we've lived.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action. - Mother Teresa