Yarn Bomb Rocking Chair!

Have you seen yarn bombing? I'm pretty positive if you're been on the internet, ever, you have. 

It's a trend where people wrap or knit yarn around ordinary items like trees, benches, bike racks, whatever! 

Well I decide to yarn bomb my rocking chair!
I got it last summer at a yard sale for $10 and love the color of it so I wasn't ready to fully commit to painting it just yet.... but needed a chair for the nursery.  At some point in my crazy thinking I got the idea to wrap the spindles of the chair with yarn!
I had several bunches of yarn left over from my feeble attempts at crocheting last winter - black, white, green, blue, red, and a coral/orange color.  Luckily all these colors fit perfect with our theme! 

I'm not gonna lie... it was tedious.  I may have watched an entire season of What Not to Wear on Netflix one Saturday working on this.  But the idea is very simple.  You tie yarn to the chair and start wrapping and wrapping and wrapping and wrapping.  And make sure it is TIGHT and that you're constantly pushing it up or down, whichever way you're wrapping, to ensure that there are no gaps. 

I had no rhyme or reason to the amount of each color that I used, I just tried to be random.

and avoid any resemblance to a chevron pattern ;) 

Give me a few months and I'll let you know how durable it is.

But the good news is if I ever get tired of it and want my plain blue chair back I just need a pair of scissors!

linking up with Craft-O-Manic! 

Alphabet Wall Art for Nursery

As promised, I will update more often and keep track the best I can of all the little projects I'm working on for the nursery for Baby Boy Coghill!

The intended "theme" of the room is black-white-and-bright!!

First, I'll share this alphabet art I made over the weekend.  It was super easy to do and took pretty much 0 art skills, promise.
I've seen tons of versions of the alphabet on pinterest and knew I wanted to make my own, and when I found the absolute perfect vinyl letters on clearance at Target I knew it'd make the project so much simpler than painting them by hand.

I started with a large canvas that I literally found in the trash!
My sister was in town visiting and we walked over to a nearby park on a Sunday afternoon, and Monday is garbage day so there was tons of stuff out.  That day I found a suitcase, Christmas ornaments, a large decorative frame, and this barely used canvas!
I figured someday I'd paint over it or find some use for it - canvases this large are not cheap.

Supplies: Canvas, letters, and white paint. 

  I started out with a few coats of white paint over someone else's failed attempt at an art project 

 Cut out each of the letters and decided what type of configuration I wanted.  I ended up putting 6 letters on the second row since F and I are such small letters. 

 Stuck them to the canvas and put it up on the wall to study it.... but it seemed like something was missing.  I didn't originally intend to have it off center (haha. maybe I shouldn't admit to that!) but once I put up the first row it was a little heavy to the left, but whatever, I just went with it figuring I'd find something to fill the space later. 

 I decided it needed some color!  So I found some scraps of paper I had lying around and played off the tribal-ish look of the letters and cut out a bunch of little triangles to get an arrow look. 

Final product!

I'm so happy with how it turned out and since we live in a rental and can't paint the walls the bright white of the canvas really brightens the room up.

I can't wait to have a little one living in this room and to someday teach them their ABCs!!!

linking up with Savvy Southern Style!

Seahorse obsessed.

One summer when I was about 8 our family went to the beach. 
My mom found a seahorse in a little tide pool and we tried to keep it alive in our cooler and bring it home!  Unfortunately that didn't work out and the poor little thing died.  (I now never take live things from the ocean, promise!!! not even sanddollars)
Anyway, this spurred my fascination with seahorses.
They are so cool... wouldn't you agree??

Here's a look back at some of my seahorse antics.

Kissing a seahorse at the Ice sculpture show Lee and I froze to death to see :)

Seahorse I drew when we lived in Grenada.... which reminds me I should find this and frame it!

Read about the others in this "collection" here. 

A couple little guys I made also while living in Grenada.

I turned the white one into a necklace and the sea glass one I just have sitting on my dress to admire.
It might be one of my most favorite things I've ever made, read about it here.

 And now thanks to Stella & Dot's Sunset Beach Charm necklace I get to wear another, somewhat upgraded version :)  Love this little guy.

Read more about my business with stella & dot here.

Honestly though, I think I just love anything that has to do with the ocean.

I'm trying my hardest to get back to the sea....

DIY : recycle old painting with quote art

Well like all other breathing 25 year olds the majority of my inspiration comes from pinterest these days.
I found a DIY art project I wanted to try

                                                                         Source: craftgawker.com via Kelsey on Pinterest

I had a painting under my bed for at least 10 years (no joke) that I picked up at a yard sale and had always intended to re-purpose.  I liked it because it was large, and have a good frame so I could easy re-cover it with canvas and paint a new picture or something.
Well flash forward a decade and I saw this and remembered my sad, forgotten painting.  And then I breathed new life into it and it proudly hangs above our bed.

This is SUPER easy to do.
promise.

All you need is:

• a painting or some type of picture with colors that you like
• paint - I used cheapo white acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby for $1 and then added a little paint thinner because I wanted some of the original artwork to show through
• letter stickers - I bought some on clearance at Jo-Anns
• a paint brush
• time 

Choosing a quote is probably about the hardest part.  I had so many ideas running through my head... but I ultimately decided on this one because I love it so much.  It has a special meaning to me ever since we lived in Grenada.  We lived in the sunshine, swam the sea, and drank lots of wild air...... 

I love how Emerson turned out.  The colors are perfect behind the words.

the bedroom isn't finished as of yet.... just this lone painting hangs on the wall.
my husband said "do all these patterns go together"
ummm not exactly. and I like it that way.

Free Find Friday!

Since moving to this awesome new neighborhood I have decided to start a weekly series called Free Find Friday because I keep finding awesome stuff!!

I'd like to start off with this amazing photo I found on the side of the road on our way home from church.  On the curb there was a huge pile of stuff - couch, boxes, chairs, and this.
My sweet husband took one look and said "you want to stop"
So out I got in my dress and heels and rummaged through and found this gem.
A photo of the Flatiron building in NYC professionally framed and in perfect condition.  It is about 24 x 36 inches.

It now lives in my kitchen.
My not completed kitchen..... but I'll share a little peak with you.....

It's not finished yet, hence why I can't show you a whole view of the room or even that chair in the front or the floor :/ haha but soon!
This is my little craft area I've carved out for myself in our kitchen, since the spare room is dominated by my husband who apparently has to study because he's going to be a doctor or something.......


Do you have great garbage in our town?? Find anything great on the side of the road lately?? Or maybe something "nearly free" from the thrift shop?? Share with me!

Dr. Seuss Lorax Tree Art

This week we had Monday and Tuesday off from school.
Monday for a snow day and Tuesday for election day here in Ohio.
My nieces and I spent Monday evening working on some art work that I was inspired by pinterest to try. 
We also paintined Dr. Seuss Lorax trees because the girls recently watched the movie, and who doesn't love Dr. Seuss inspired crazy trees :)


We used paper grocery sacks from Kroger, a mountain dew bottle, paint, and an old pickle jar lid to put the paint in.


Use the bottom of the pop bottle as a stamp




the lid works as a stamp too!




winter, spring, and summer







Once we filled all the paper bags we held an art auction in the kitchen and sold the paintings to my parents (their grandparents) for .25-1.00.  My nieces' idea... they are little entrepreneurs!  

Hey latest followers!

When I'm feeling uninspired I like to look at what others are doing and I'm usually left in awe at how talented some people are.

• Standart - shares pictures of amazing art work and recently posted a group of oil paintings that I literally drooled over.  I wish I could paint like this!

• Sandra - the Frugal French Girl has also caught the Picnik bug! 
  This is a picture she did using the Halloween effects - love it!
  AND the tagline of her blog is "bringing the beach home on a budget"
  Great minds think alike Sandra :)

• Shelly at What the Shell (hahahaha yes that is the name of her blog!) shares my love of beach finds!  She finds the most incredible stuff!  I can't wait to organize and display all my finds in our future home like Shelly did her in her house! looks so good!  I just want to explore her finds!

• Two Sisters blog over at Design DNA and had way too much fun with Halloween!  They threw the scariest/best Halloween party I've ever seen.  The shower scene made my skin crawl... but I love the glass bottle & candle covered table, I'm keeping this in mind for next year for sure.

Thanks for the follow guys!!
Everyone visit these fun blogs and share some love!

That darn cabinet.

Do you remember that horribly awkward cabinet I have dividing my living room and kitchen?
I am still on the mission to cover up the glass panes and hide all my dishes and food that fills these cabinets.
but I think the cabinet is winning.

This is our apartment on the day we moved in.
I can't believe how empty it looks.  Where did I get all of this stuff?!
oh yea. from the trash...

Halloween Party Last year
the cabinet looks slightly less cluttered because I was literally using all our dishes for the party.
and um like jello much?

Christmas snowflakes

so apparently the bottom looked so bad I just cropped it out.

And this is what it looks like today:

I only had 2 sheets of tissue paper left, and they're not even the same color, but it is more noticeable in this photo than it is in real life, and they aren't big enough to cover the entire glass, so I added the newspaper to tie into the newspaper roses I made and for more texture, but I still don't know about it.
I want it to look full and complete, but not cluttered, you know?

Glass panes aside, I love the top shelf. 

that wine bottle again! 
I don't even drink wine, I just like the bottle.  I picked some flowers and berries & bam fall decor!
That triangle is a piece of wood I found wrapped in twine & the basket really deserves a post all of its own... it is a Calabash.  A fruit  that I picked, carved out like a basket, and let dry.  They sell them in the markets here.  When I get home I'm probably going to paint it. or not. I like the color and texture.

remember when I made magazine roses? well newspaper roses are even better!
I love the texture and they are much easier to mold into shape.

love my sign from the ditch!

Do you have a problem area in your home that you're always trying to cover up or fix?
I'm open to suggestions for mine!  But remember that I don't have a Target or Goodwill to run to buy something...

almost copy-kat art

One of my character flaws is that I don't like to copy things (hence my love/hate relationship with pinterest) 
I want to be creative all on my own. be original.
But the truth is.... I'm not really all that one of a kind.
Many of the ideas I have seem original to me, but someone else has already thought of it.
To deal with this I'd like to call myself the "almost copy-kat"
I see something I like and then try to put my own spin on it.

I am a supporter of trying to re-create art for yourself.
Art is so expensive. eesh.
I'm that over-confident person who refuses to buy anything that I think I can make myself.
Sometimes it turns out good... and sometimes it is just an outlet for when I get that urge to paint or draw.

Last week I tried my hand at re-creating a favorite image of mine from pinterest.
that sea horse I used for inspiration for my sea glass sea horse.

Source: printshop.urbanoutfitters.com via Angela on Pinterest

I used some really thin sharpie markers that my friend from college Tiffany gave me when I was home.  She donate SO much awesome stuff to our after school program - the kids love the books she sent and I've been getting lots of use out of the sharpies! and not just for art purposes ;)
Tiffany has a super cute blog - Teach.Run.Love.
If you like running (she's about to do her 4th half marathon), teaching 1st graders, or cooking check her out!

ok end of commercial break.
back to sea horses.

my version.  It is draw on 8x10 paper.

But I couldn't stop there.  I was loving this so I decided to draw a fish in a similar style.

But you can't stop at 2.  You need at least 3 for a "collection"
So I drew a little jelly fish!

The similar style and colors makes them a beautiful grouping!  I cannot wait to frame and display them on a gallery wall when we get an apartment in America!