From Blank Canvas to a Piece of Art

Now lets be honest. Art today is pricey. But if you want to spruce up your apartment/house on a budget all you need is a blank canvas. Well, and some paint and inspiration!

Like i've mentioned in previous posts all you need is a idea and you can turn it into anything. One day while shopping at my favorite local arts and craft store (Ben Franklin) i noticed canvas was on sale. Ask any art student and they will tell you this is the pricey fundamental piece for a work of art so when its on sale might as well stock up. So thats what i did. I purchased 4 8x10 pieces and 1 2 1/2"x 3 1/2 " piece. Mind you i bought them over a year ago and it wasnt until i moved again that i finally did something with them. Originally i was going to use them as art for a head board since my bed doesnt have one but when i moved something more crafty came to mind (that will come in a later post).

Back on topic. The small pieces were an early project. For some odd reason i had bought some foam stamps but never used them or gifted them for anything. I thought...these would be cute for decoration..only if it was more apartment friendly. So what did i do....I traced the words on to those handy pieces of canvas and made them cute! With a little puff paint and cute hand writing you can accomplish a lot. Here is the final Project with the inspiration below.

With a little change in color and decorative background swirls, dots, and hearts, i think they turned out adorable. Now i just need to figure out where to put them. Im thinking my room but i already have lots of stuff there so maybe kitchen. Who knows. By the way, theres only three because i messed up on the Dream one on the first try..got a little to artsy fartsy for my own good and it went over board. Always nice to have a back up!

Now for the larger piece. My best friend and I were moving in together and i thought this was perfect to decorate our bare white walls with. First i had spent about 3 hours outlining a beautiful script of our names, filling it in with paint, and fixing the edges. Then when the blackboard project came along, i forgot to move it and some paint spilled on it :( Thats my fault of course...you should always use a drop cloth!!

Anyways...seeing how the blackboard paint was black i threw some black paint on it and painted it all black. Seeing as our living room colors are black, white, and yellow, this was the first place to start. Now it sat like that for at least 2 weeks until i was bored and picked it up. Took some white puff paint and went to town. For some reason i really enjoy painting swirls. They are fun and can look really elegant. I offset the drawings to give it a more art perspective. Let dry and then time to figure out the final piece. We wanted to write a cute saying on one of our walls but could never come up with something. I goggled "home quote" and found one i instantly fell in love with. Find it and the final project below:

"A house is made with walls and beams; A home is made with love and dreams" - Unknown

Another Tip! I didnt have yellow puff paint that matched what i had been using for other projects around the house so i took the exact color i had been using and mixed in with a white puff paint. Came out the same if not better and gets the job done!

I showed dana and she loved it. Simple way to take a blank canvas and turn it into a piece of art!

Glitter, Puff Paint, Ribbon, Oh My!

During my transition from college life to real life, I've also been trying to find my place in my sorority life. I was extremely involved as a collegian and i wouldn't expect less of me as an alumnae. Recruitment happen to be coming up and since crafting has been one of the few things to keep me sane post school, i decided to see what i could do to help out.

Now for those who never gone through formal recruitment or heard of it, ill break it down a little. At my university, Fraternity and Sorority life is not like you see in movies or hear about in the south. We don't have houses so our recruitment process takes place in out student commons. On Bid Day (the last day, when women choose where they will join) all chapters are in one room. Now instead of clapping and yelling each time a women "walks", we use noise makers to show our excitement. Each organization has a different noise maker so when a woman chooses your chapter you shake your noise maker and so on for each org. Our first year we used Tic Tacs, Second Year was kinda like a paddle ball with two beads that you spun to make noise, and this year i was handed empty medicine bottles wrapped in red felt.

Heres what they looked like when i got them:

Now my job, in the words of Tim Gunn, was to Make it work! So i went to my local craft store (Ben Franklin), A sorority woman's favorite place to shop and searched for the answers. I ended up buying some black and white glitter, black and white decorative ribbon, and finding some red and black confetti stars, and puff paint at home in my craft drawer.

The First step was to make them not look like medicine bottles. I made a simple wash of mainly glue with some very little water to attach glitter to the tops. I combined the white and black glitter in a small bowl and sprinkled in the confetti starts. Next you take a paint brush and paint the glue onto the tops. Then you sprinkle the glitter on.

Note: When using glitter make sure you put something under it (Newspaper as you see here) this eliminates the hard process of cleaning it up because it sticks everywhere!!

Close Up of Finished Lids

After i let them all dry i took cute sayings like "Bid Day 2010", "Alpha Omicron Pi", "Rho Beta", "Exceed the Expectation", and wrote them on the side of the lids. Similar sayings relating to our history, chapter, and ideals were written with puff paint on the velvet. The 4 different types of ribbon i got (on sale might i add) was used to add bows and more decoration. Attach ribbon with hot glue for the added touch. Here of some of the final products.

Obviously you can tell that red, black, and white are the colors we use. Cardinal is our true color. The panda is our "unofficial" mascot. You can also see my attempt at a ruby (our jewel) on one.

I wish i would have taken more pictures of the ones that were my individual favorites. I wanted them to be cute but also reminders of what we stand for. My ultimate favorite said "Character, Dignity, Scholarship, and College Loyalty" which you will find in the object of our Fraternity and then in a close second was the one with our founders names.

Its my hopes that as they shake them in excitement to except these new women into our sisterhood that they are reminded of our mission. If they pass them out to our new members i hope as they learn and grow with in the chapter they will see these sayings, names, and people again, and build memories upon that. Once finished decorating and all paint and hot glue is dried, add you noise makers (in this case beans were the loudest) and you have your perfect Bid Day Noise Maker!

 

My new project

So much like everyone else in the word, i have caved and have gotten a blog...

I have wanted to write a blog for so long but i felt like most things i would write about that would be considered interesting would be highly inappropriate to post on the internet. SO..... i was left wonder what i could possibly write about that would satisfy not only myself but the readers out there?

It wasn't until recently that i figured it out. Unbeknown to her, Ryan the Girl inspired me. Her blog is amazing! If you haven't clicked the link to read her posts yet, what are you waiting for. Fellow Blogger Ryan, also a friend of mine, saw on my facebook that i was starting a new project and expressed her interest..Thus the blog was born!

I thought if one person could be interested in my Crafting adventure, there must be more!

I started crafting probably close to 6...not really getting into it until i was 10 or so but my mother and i always bonded over arts and crafts. Even my brother is artsy fartsy. Started with gimp (you know that rubber-like string you braid and twist to make all kinds of stuff) and peeler beads (the tiny plastic tubey things that you set on a peg board and melt together to make an image/design) and grew into more complicated challenges. Clay, Stamping, and the all time favorite Scrap-booking were soon to follow. I even dabbled in stained glass for a bit. In high school it was jewelry. While in college, it was anything wood that could be painted. You name it, i could paint it and make it adorable: Paddles, Jewelry Boxes, Picture Frames, even just wood letters and putting them another piece of painted wood. Now, out of college, i am more into home decor (ill go more into this in later).

Now that you have the basics of how both the blog and crafting came into my life, but i hope you come back and read more about the chronicles of my crafting life, past, present, and future!