Friday, May 14, 2010

DIY mania!

Before the mania, I would like to say that I now remember the real reason why I discontinued my previous blog: I never write anything.  So, I'm just sayin', don't let your expectations get too high.

And back to the mania.  Well, it's not really mania exactly, more like mild interest.  But I do like doing things myself.  In this way I am very much like a 5-year-old.  My recent underemployment and increase in free time has led to some redecorating (and a little too much shopping...eh).  I wanted to share one of my more successful projects -- hand-painted curtains!  This was crazy easy and also crazy cheap.  I've been looking for bedroom curtains for a year and a half and I fell in love with these Ballard Design panels that Nate Berkus used on a Oprah show makeover.

 
Soooo beautiful!  And $65 per panel.  We would need four panels.    No Ballard Design curtains for me.  Then I saw simple white curtains at Target for $8!  Regular price!  (I can't find them on the website or I'd share my find.)  I made a trip to Michaels, got the cheap craft paint, a package of stencils, and a foam stencil brush.


(hi Buddy paw)

Stencil, hang to dry, stencil, hang to dry, stencil a little bit at a time and about 4 days and 40 dollars later we had this!


It was a cheap, easy, and custom project.  Oh, and then after we rearranged our room I got excited about painting and did these -



Again, really simple: a 2-pack of canvases from Michaels, 89-cent craft paint in yellow and white, and some picture of birds and branches that I looked up on the internet.  A coat of yellow, some copying of pictures while I watched Dr. Oz and TA-DA!  ART!  And now our bookshelf area isn't so boring.

 

OK, enough of that.  These are things I thought I couldn't do and now that I know that I can, I know that anyone can!  :-)

6 comments:

  1. I love those paintings. They are fantastic. I'm going to show Scott because he recently tried to paint a little something for the bathroom that went all wrong...And the curtains look great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this! Did you freehand the birds based on the pictures you found? Or use some other method?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I did freehand them. I googled "birds", "branches", and "bird outlines", got about 4 different images, pasted them into publisher and created outlines. I also got a small branch from outside that kind of looked like the branches I wanted in the picture. I did the base coat and then the white part only took about 20 minutes total!

    ReplyDelete
  4. and the white-on-color is VERY forgiving. it looks great even if it's not perfect. much easier than trying to make something with color and shading and blah blah blah. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. um, how cute are you?? I love it ALL!

    ReplyDelete
  6. These look great, love the yellow!

    ReplyDelete