DIY CANVAS WALL ART

Good morning everyone! Did you miss me?  I've been away because we had issues with our Internet service, but it's now up and running and I can finally post again.  Thanks to all my followers for being patient and a special welcome to all my new followers.  

It's a very busy time of year with yard work and all the extra activities of summer.  My parents will be arriving the end of the week for a ten day visit.  I'll try to do some posting but will be spending some quality time with them.

Today I'd like to share a quick and easy art project.  It's a great solution for wall art if you're wanted a little change and on a budget.

Here's what you'll need...

~ canvas or flat surface for mounting your fabric onto

~ fabric

~ staples

While at Jo Ann's fabric yesterday I ran across some fabric I loved and thought it would work great for some summer artwork.

I started with a blank canvas that I already had in the house.

I took the fabric and cut it to the size of the canvas, 

adding one inch for turning over.

Using a mitered fold on the fabric corner, makes for a nice even and flat corner.

 Proceed to staple the entire back by adding staples, begin in the middle of each side and working outward. Making sure to keep the fabric stretched tightly.

Quick and easy summer artwork for under $10 !

Have a great day!

DECORATING USING YARD SALE FINDS

On Wednesday, June 15th, the Nesting Place is hosting a party.  It's a yard sale linking party to show off some of your favorite yard sale finds and treasures.  I love parties and yard sales, so I'm joining in on the fun.

I've had so many great yard sale finds over the years.  I started going to yard sales with my mom and two sisters at a young age.  We'd look forward to this once a year event for weeks (there weren't any garage sales in the small town where I grew up).  My sister and I knew yard sales meant new clothes and things for our room.  We'd wake up early and drive an hour to the city with our sack lunches in hand.  As you can tell I'm a well experienced yard sale shopper.

Yard sales offer a great variety of things you can buy from clothing to decorative items for the home.  You can even find furniture and tools!  Here are just a few of my  finds.

Great Household Decorations

Bathroom Decor

Seasonal Decor

and even

Wedding Decor !!!

Using yard sale items for weddings can help keep costs down a lot!

Here are some examples of my favorites!

Read my Wedding Wednesdays 

  posts for more fun diy's and savings ideas.

The table skirt I made using new fabric purchased for $3.00

Candle holders and candy jars for .25 cents to $1.00

A large bag of tulle for $1.50

Ring bearer pillow $1.00 

(We added the embellishments our self to the pillow.)

Table clothes $1.00

Flower girl basket .50 cents 

(We completely recovered the basket with fabric and embellishments.)

Plant stand pillars $1.50 for the set! (I couldn't believe it when I found them so cheap!)

A very large box of Christmas lights....some still new in the boxes, as well as the plastic hangers to hang them - $3.00

Six (boxes of twelve) wedding votive candles $1.00 per box

Rose petals one large box .50 cents

Pillar candles .25 cents and .50 cents each (Nobody even knew they were used at another wedding. You always pre-light the candles at rehearsal anyway.)

Hanging bench lanterns .50 cents 

and even two brand new boxes of 8 lantern hangers .25 cents

Pottery Barn Architectural Prints Inspiration

Recently, while browsing through my Pottery Barn magazine, I saw these great architectural prints. Go here to see the Pottery Barn photo.  My husband, daughters and I love to take photos of old architecture.  While visiting Seattle, WA,  I noticed these lovely old pillars with great architectural detail.  So of course I took a photo of them.  Upon seeing the Pottery Barn prints, I decided I could use my photos to make my own version rather than pay $47 each.


Using a photo editing program I changed the photo to sepia and then sketch mode.  Here's my end result.

I hung the print using close-pins like the one in this photo. See it hanging in the upper right hand side of the PB photo?


Here is my knockoff version in a frame.

 

Here it is with an additional frame.

My DIY Thrifty Version Costs: 

25 cents for card stock

50 cent garage sale frame

Total cost - 75 cents !

Not a bad price for a piece of artwork.

I'm linking this post to...
Beneath My Heart DIY Best of June Party

Reupholstered Wingback Chair Revealed

I've been working for sometime along with my dear husband reupholstering our wing back living room chairs.

Here is what we started with ~ 

 two very dated 

Pink Velvet Chairs.

First thing I did, after picking out my fabric, was to remove the old fabric.

You can read about it here.

This is how the chair looked after the fabric was removed.

While removing the fabric, I took many photos to help me remember how to put it back together.  I also wrote on the back of the old fabric...labeling each piece for reassembling.

They were then placed on the fabric to act as patterns.

 Since I'm very thrifty and have a limited budget
to work with,

I recycled the zipper and all the piping.

I sewed new piping...

...and created my own knife pleat for the skirt.

Read how I sewed the knife pleat  here.

Then the reassembling process could begin.  Batting was added to the tops of the arms, and the fabric
stapled in place.

My husband helped me with all the stapling of the fabric.

After we had the fabric stapled into place, I realized 
we had a problem!

When I decided to add the knife pleat skirt....

all the ones I'd looked at were slipcovers and not upholstered.

Oh...Oh!!!!

How to attach it???

After researching a little I found a blog tutorial by

Centsational Girl on double welted cord.

 So I whipped some up only to find that my staples

still showed in the middle of the welting. 
The question remained ...

what to do now?

I finally came up with the solution: First, I sewed a one and a half inch strip of cloth on the top of the box pleat right sides together.  Next, I folded the strip of fabric over, and top stitched it approximately 1/2" from the fold.  Then I folded and ironed the top of the fabric strip (1" now folded over and down the backside).  Piping was then stitched into place (see picture below).  This left approximately 1/2 inch strip of cloth just below piping on back for staples.


Whala.... the staples are hidden!

We found the duck fabric hard to work with as an upholstery fabric. The cloth has virtually no stretch making it difficult to work with, so the chair isn't with out mistakes.  I love the finished look, however, making it worth the effort.  A vast improvement over the pink velvet!

I've added a few accents to the chair - an afghan that I purchased from Goodwill for $ 2.99, 
and two pillows that I made.
  You can read the tutorials for the nest pillow  here and the pocket pillow here.

So what do you think?
I'd say not to bad for a $35 transformation!

One chair done and one more to go!

I'm linking this post to....

Miss Mustard Seed Furniture Party

Just a Girl Show and Share Day 

Thrifty Decor Chick : Before and After Party 

Blue Cricket Design Show and Tell 

Organize and Decorate Everything

Beyond the Picket Fence 

Miss Mustard Seed 2011 Favorite Furniture Party

I'm Back !

Life has been a little busy around here as you may may have noticed by the lack of posts.  Two weeks ago, I was busy getting ready for a garage sale and packing for a trip.

  This past week I traveled over four time zones with my husband.  He attended a pastors conference, while I visited with relatives.

The first night we stayed in a hotel, doing a park and ride to the airport.  That night in the hotel was eventful ~ we were awakened at 2 a.m. to a fire alarm!  Yikes!  Thankfully, it was a false alarm; and we were able to stay the rest of the night in our room.  Needless to say, I didn't sleep after that!  We had to be up to catch our flight at 4 a.m., so not much sleep for me!

We arrived to our destination safely and were greeted by warm  weather.  It was overcast but in the 80's.  Here are just a few photos of the beautiful flowering spring trees we enjoyed.

Our return trip home was eventful as well.  We arrived to the airport only to find our flight delayed by a half hour...then a hour and then two!  This caused us to miss our connecting flight.  Thanks to Delta, we had a great dinner and lovely evening in a hotel.

Now that we're back home, I had a lot of catching up to do.  Tomorrow, I hope to reveal my newly reupholstered wingback chair. 

Please return to see the transformation!

DIY DAILY ORGANIZATION SYSTEM

I've been wanting to create an organization/message center for our home.  Having very limited space for this in our home, I chose the side of our kitchen cabinets.  


Here's a before photo - just a calendar hung here.

Pottery Barn has a customized organization system that enables you to create your own message/organization system. The only problem is their systems would cost $44 (on sale) for each piece I wanted.  I set out to make an area myself using my DIY skills. I started looking for used items that would work in the area.  You can imagine how excited I was to find a whiteboard calendar for .99 cents, a pin board for $1.99 and cork board for .49 cents.  Although they did need a little sprucing up. Here they are with their imperfections.

As you can see by the photo, the whiteboard needed a good cleaning.

The pin board needed some touch ups that were easily fixed with a sharpie pen and stapler.

Here's my new daily organization station.

(The location of my organization station makes it difficult to get a nice photo shot.)

The white board on the top was purchased at Micheal's using a gift card and 40% off coupon making it $5.00.  I'll be exchanging it because I found a dented area on the top left.

Here are the other pieces all cleaned up.

I added some extra tacks and magnets from my office. I also added "notes" using some left over lettering from our daughters wedding.

My version for $9 compared to $142 at Pottery Barn.