Faux Sho: My Faux Flower Canvas

Hello, friends! Have you ever had one of those projects on your to-do list that just keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the list? Well, over the weekend, I finally finished the middle piece for the art collage on my guest room wall. Read about the rest of my do-it-yourself wall art in this post. And what was my piece de resistance??

This adorable faux flower canvas. Several weeks ago, I saw a tutorial on this cute little project over on the blog Twelve Crafts Till Christmas. I knew it'd be perfect for our guest room wall, which just got updated.

Here's a close up of the guest room wall art collage.

See that blank middle canvas? Perfect spot for the faux flower wall art.

It took me awhile to find fabric that I wanted for the project. I love the purple, green and coral scrapbook paper that I framed and wanted something fun and funky to accompany it. After searching through several fabric stores, I finally found exactly what I was looking for in the form of tea towels from Cost Plus World Market (on sale, half off! yesss). Let's be honest, I did a happy dance in the aisle- the towels match the existing wall art perfectly!

I simply started by cutting circles in the fabric, alternating sizes and patterns. I then scrunched all of the circles up in a plastic baggie, so that the flowers would have a wrinkled, 3-D look.

Next, I threaded each flower with a straight pin stuck through a faux pearl. This makes the flower's center and it also connects each flower to the canvas.

On the back side of the canvas, I bent each straight pin back with a pair of pliers so that it wouldn't scratch against the wall and so that it wouldn't slip out easily.

Here's a close up of the finished product.

I love it! It's exactly what I was looking for. Here's my new art hanging on the wall in the guest room.

You'll have to forgive the empty frame on the left... the frame fell in the middle of the night and shattered the glass. Until I replace it, the frame is just sitting empty. Another thing for the to-do list! :)

Lets not forget what this guest bedroom looked like before.

Don't you think it's looking a lot better these days?! :) Thanks again to Twelve Crafts Till Christmas for sharing the idea! What do you guys think?

Linked to:
Between Naps on the Porch
The Girl Creative
Skip To My Lou
Remodelaholic Craft Blog
Fingerprints on the Fridge
Today's Creative Blog
Blue Cricket Design
The Girl Creative
Tatertots and Jello 

Hoo-ray Stripes!

Hi friends! Usually I draft the posts but today I thought I'd let the hubby in on some blogging action. We've got a fun new project to share, so without further ado....

Hello out there- it's David, the other half of Ten June. So far, I've just watched over my lovely wife's shoulder as we got this blog on the road. But today, I decided I'd give it a shot myself and on what better a topic than the lovely stripes that we adorned our office walls with? And while no, this post has nothing to do with beer, I can say that yes, I'm a guy, so I had to start off my post with a little beer reference... Red Stripe Beer commercial anyone? It cracks me up every time. Hoo-ray for our stripes.

I have to post the disclaimer that we undertook this project pre-blogging and thus, we're sans mid-project pictures... so, with that said, I'll just have to describe it it for you.

If you recall from the "Before and Afters" in our House Tour, you will remember that all of the main room walls in the house were painted the same blah neutral color. Here's our office "before."

Just like all of the other neutral wall colors in the house, we decided right after moving in that this color had to go. We decided on a darker neutral in Olympic's Dusty Trail. As we painted the living room and hall, we contemplated what to do with the office. We knew that we loved the Dusty Trail color, but we also wanted something that would stand out and make the office a fun and inviting space. Michelle came across a stripe painting tutorial at Young House Love (our favorite go-to blog), and boom - we found what we were looking for. So we went for it- contrasting stripes with our beloved Dusty Trail and its complementary cousin Off White. We chose the complementary stripe color from the same paint sample chip as Dusty Trail to ensure a proper hue match. YHL suggests that you paint from two colors that are close in tone, but we wanted more of contrast and so we chose the darkest and lightest colors on the paint chip's spectrum.

So on to the fun part - the STRIPES. In preparation for the stripes, we painted the entire room in Olympic's Off White to establish a clean slate. Once the base was on the wall, the fun/hours of math/re-taping four million times to get a straight line/are-we-going-crazy-because-we're-trying-to-paint-horizontal-stripes-on-the-wall began.

We decided that we wanted to have an odd number of stripes so that the darker Dusty Trail would contrast against the white crown moulding at the top of the wall and the base board at the bottom of the wall. It took us awhile visualizing the stripes to help us to decide on the number that we wanted - turns out 9 was our lucky number. We divided our wall height by 9 and marked a light pencil notch on the wall at each measurement point.

Then I experimented with a couple of methods to set out our game plan for the stripes (taping paper to the wall? way too complicated. using a laser leveler? not accurate enough) and found that a good ol' fashioned tape measure was the best way to go. Michelle and I laid out the stripes by measuring from the ceiling down to the floor every three feet or so. The reason for this was to allow for shorter tape runs (trying to run a wall's length of painters tape gets a little messy) and to allow for "checks" for the proper dimensions of the stripes. I'm not going to lie- it was kind of difficult to remember which stripe was being painted and whether the tape had to go above or below the mark. When you're taping, you have to tape above the stripe line and below the stripe line and it ends up a little hairy looking (ie. like you've completely mismeasured the entire thing).

After a couple of hours of measuring and taping the walls, it was time to start rolling. As the paint went up, the stripes became visible and the effect we were looking for was coming to fruition. I'll point out a key step to the process - tape removal. It is crucial that the tape be removed while the paint is still wet to ensure clean, crisp stripes. Otherwise, as the paint dries, it will bleed under the tape. And yes, we learned that the hard way.

After all that work, we were really excited with the results. Here are the stripes, in their glory.

As you can see, the process was fairly easy and offers all kinds of character to brighten up a space.
 

We like the fact that the stripes peak through the view from our living room. We definitely got the fun character we were looking for. Cheers to Mic for her great idea!

 

So there we have it! David's first blog post ever and our amaaaazing office makeover. In the words of David, hoo-ray stripes!

Linking to:

The Girl Creative

C.R.A.F.T.

Making the World Cuter

Between Naps on the Porch

Skip to My Lou

Blue Cricket Design

Trendy Treehouse

And featured on Remodelaholic!

Monet? Van Gogh? Scrapbook Paper?

Why hello! Anyone notice anything different about Ten June?? That's right, folks, I've got a new blog layout! The amazingly talented Marina from Penny Lane Designs helped design the new Ten June. I'm in love! From the layout to the style to the font, it's exactly what I was looking for. She did a great job! So welcome to the new and improved Ten June. 

We've also made a mini-improvement somewhere else around here. When David and I moved into our house a few months ago, the front bedroom belonged to the previous owner's eight-year-old daughter. Here's a refresher of what it looked like before we moved in, just in case you don't remember.

Helloooo, Pepto Bismol. Super cute for a little girl but not so much for our main guest bedroom. So, we stocked up on a few cans of paint + primer combo and switched over to a much gentler light green color. And no, it wasn't very much fun to paint over a hot pink ceiling!

For the last couple of months (since the big paint makeover), this room has been left sort of empty without anything on the walls. David and I decided that we didn't want to allocate too much moolah for decorating the room (we had already shelled out about $100 for paint and about $150 for the new bedding). Let's just say our budget was somewhere around.... $20. Okay, so maybe we planned to spend a little bit more than that, but you get the gist. While it was quite easy to fill up the windowed wall with the dresser (who, by the way, is just begging to be refinished- another project, another day!!) and mirror, the wall adjacent to the doorway had a big, open space that needed to be filled.

I decided that because the wall is so large, a couple of prints just wouldn't do it. So I headed over to Wally World and bought a bunch of cheap wooden frames. I chose a couple of frames in each of the various sizes that my local store had. After adding a few unused frames from our collection at home, it was time to spray paint. I broke out the white high gloss spray paint and the frames transitioned from mismatched wood tones to a crisp, clean white set of frames.

Then, it was time to hang the frames. David and I played around with the layout of the frame collage on the floor. I've seen lots of suggestions to sketch and cut out paper models of the frames so that you can move them around easily and test out the layout of the collage without putting too many holes in the wall. While that's an excellent idea, I'm a little too lazy for that, so I just went straight for the hammer and nails. :)

So here's the picture frame layout we ended up with. I'm not sold on it- in fact, I think we need a few more frames to even it out. I also think we may have gone a little high with the group, but it's a big, empty wall, so it may take awhile to fill it up and get it just right.

Up next? Time to actually fill the frames! Don't forget our cheapola budget... in all honesty, we had maxed out the budget with the frames and spray paint, so the art had to be free. I rummaged through my art and scrapbook stuff that I found around the house, found a couple of images and quotes from Google, and voila! I've got art. Here's what I ended up with. [Please excuse the limey color that these pictures somehow turned into from camera to computer- the wall color is actually a lovely shade of light green!]

Let's take a closer look. The smaller frames are simply filled with funky scrapbook paper.

This frame is simply a cute quote I found online, printed on some shiny scrapbook paper.

It's twin sized frame holds a few scrapbook buttons (fabric covered brads with a little sparkle on them). I'm not sure I'm loving what's in this frame, but it is a good start and I really like the dimension that the buttons bring to the mix.

After reading this genius post on Young House Love, I decided to add some color to the picture frame collage with several Martha Stewart paint chips. That's right, these are just the free paint chip samples that I picked up from Home Depot. Can we say free art?! I love the modern aspect and the beautiful color that these bring into the room.

I also printed a few botanical print images off of Google images.

The piece de resistance is actually a really fun project that I've got coming, so stay tuned. Until then, all we've got in the center of the collage is a blank canvas.

Well, you may think I'm crazy for using Home Depot scraps and Google images, but I'm pretty happy with my DIY cheap art! The fact that it's cheap and done by yours truly gives me the chance to switch up the art, instead of feeling obligated to keep an expensive piece in place. While I wish I could fill every wall with fine art, sometimes scrapbook paper will just have to do! Here's the current shot of the guest bedroom wall.

Linking up to:
http://www.betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/
http://thediyshowoff.blogspot.com/
http://www.skiptomylou.org/2010/01/04/made-by-you-mondays/
http://craftskeepmesane.blogspot.com/
http://todayscreativeblog.net/
http://craftedition.blogspot.com/
http://www.bluecricketdesign.net/
http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/
http://www.fingerprintsonthefridge.com/
http://serenitynow4amanda.blogspot.com/
http://www.bystephanielynn.com/
http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/

Happy Fall Y'all!

Sorry for the cheesy title, but I knew I had to break it out somewhere! :) Let's just say it has been a true, blue Monday around here. Aren't we all a little frazzled when we start off the week? Whew. Thank goodness for Tuesdays to help us move on from Mondays!

With that said, I wanted to (finally!) share some of my fall decorations. Some of it is hand-made and some if it is store-bought. Or, if you're my mom, it's all "made" in the sense that "I made it to the store and back!"

Unfortunately, many of these pictures aren't of the best quality. I'm away at work during the day so I don't always have the best picture-taking conditions (obvious photo tip from Michelle: 11 PM when it's pitch black dark outside is not a good time to take pictures without a flash!). Hopefully they turned out half-way decent.

Without further introduction... the fall collection :)

homemade wreath on our front door

I actually made this wreath a couple of years ago, at our old house. I didn't want to spend $50 on one of the beautiful wreaths at Hobby Lobby, so I made my own for about $12. All it took was a wire wreath and a few strands of fall greenery. Even though I made it a few years ago, doesn't it look absolutely perfect with the red front door on our house now?! Love it! (PS- I spy a couple of puppy dogs peeking through the front door! They're probably thinking WHAT is she doing??!)

homemade front door wreath close-up

Hobby Lobby pumpkin

homemade fall leaf arrangement on right wall

homemade fall leaf arrangement close-up

This little guy was just a sparkly bunch of leaves ($3, Hobby Lobby) and a wicker sconce ($3, Hobby Lobby) all found in the floral department.

fall mantle in our living room

I made the potted arrangements on the right of the mantel by sticking some wiry fall greenery into a couple of wicker potpourri balls. Then I just rested them on top of some plainjane flower pots and poof! you've got a decoration.

fall mantle close up

fall mantle close up

Again, sorry for the poor picture quality! Now all I need is a pumpkin spiced latte and some pumpkin cake and we're good to go!

Linked to:
http://www.skiptomylou.org/
Making the World Cuter
http://craftskeepmesane.blogspot.com/
http://theinspiredroom.net/
http://todayscreativeblog.net/
http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/
http://www.bluecricketdesign.net/
http://thisblessednest.blogspot.com/
http://www.thethriftyhome.com/

http://www.centsationalgirl.com/
http://hookedonhouses.net/
http://www.thenester.com/
Tater Tots & Jello

DIY Picture Frame Update

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this post about the DIY picture frame I made for my little sister, Callie, who was going away to college. I wanted something special for her to have in her dorm room, and this is what I came up with. All the project really involves is an open-backed frame, some picture hanging wire, and some clothespins. You can find the "how-to" details on the previous post.

This is Callie's final dorm room art product, where I added family pictures, a family recipe (French Toast!)
and some fun trinkets, all dolled up to match Callie's black and hot pink dorm room.

The final product hanging on Callie's dorm room wall!

As I was making the frame for Callie, I decided that I kind of wanted one too! Since funky black and hot pink aren't exactly the color schemes in my house, I ended up on the opposite side of the spectrum and went (surprise, surprise!) the au naturale route.

I found the perfect weathered wood frame at Hobby Lobby (50% off, of course!) and got to work, adding mainly pictures that my cousin took when she was in town a few weeks ago. I also added a few fun trinkets that are special to David and I.

And here's the finished product!

And some close up shots.

Besides the pictures, we added some things we picked up while we were on our visit to Savannah, Georgia last month. The fun hand-stiched bobble guy is actually stationary that was hand-made by a SCAD (Savannah College of Arts and Design) student! They have an entire store in downtown Savannah that is dedicated to selling the creations of the students, professors, and alumni of SCAD. For those of you who can't make it down to Savannah anytime soon, don't worry, they've got an online store posted here: SCAD Store.

The antique "r" button (for our last name) and the antique number pins (spelling out a number near & dear to our hearts) were also picked up in Savannah at The Paris Market. This store could hands-down be one of the coolest stores I've ever been in. You honestly feel like you are shopping at a Parisian antique flea market! It is super, super cool.

While I really love Callie's fun dorm room art, I am super in love with ours as well! The fun part is that the art is completely interchangeable, so we can mix it up whenever the urge strikes! Here's the frame up in the living room.

I love, love DIY (read: cheap!) wall art, so go ahead and please comment, share and link up to any new DIY art that you may have created lately!

 

Whatever Goes Wednesday on Someday Crafts