Cheap Wall "Art"

I recently redecorated Lily's room.  I have a little of my mom in me and get bored easily when it comes to decorating and love to change things up.  Unfortunately, I can't do it as often as I would like to now that I'm a stay-at-home mom on a very limited budget.

I was ready to get rid of Lily's nursery and give her a "big girl" room...well, at least a bigger girl room.  I chose to decorate her room in Tiffany blue, black, and white.  Paint is cheap.  However, all new wall decor wasn't really in the budget.

I repurposed Lily's name plaques that were in her nursery.  I bought 4 sheets of scrapbook paper and decoupaged the paper to the letters.  Easy peasy...they turned out cute, but I just wasn't satisfied with how they looked hanging over Lily's bed.  I think maybe they are just too small.

I was on a mission to find something larger, yet relatively inexpensive to hang there.  I found this garland on Pinterest and decided I could adapt this to make a canvas.  I went into Hobby Lobby with expectations of buying a large canvas.  Holy cow are they ever expensive!!!!!  I almost gave up on my idea until I spied a two-pack of smaller canvases for $7.99.  Hmmmmmm...hang two canvases side by side!

I gathered my supplies including:  canvases, spray paint (even though they are white, I still chose to paint the canvases for a brighter white), sprapbook paper, flower punch, string, large needle, glue gun, and a pencil.

After painting the canvases, I marked off every two inches on the back, top and bottom.  The marks were where I would be hot gluing the strings down. I then glued down the first string (actually...two strings...just my choice for some reason).

I threaded 3 paper flowers on each string and then pulled the string taut and hot glued it to the back.  BTW...the back isn't very pretty...lol.

The flowers can be positioned however you want.  I chose to scatter them all over the canvas.

The finished project.

Right after I hung them, I decided to take them back down and bend
the petals up abit to give it a more dimensional look.
 I'm not sure if it was the rightchoice or not, but it's done.

The total cost of this project was about $9.  All I had to buy was the paper (I used four 8 1/2 by 11 sheets) and the canvases.  I had the rest of the supplies already on hand.

II think this would be really cute with the canvases painted some bright color too.  However, the only other color in Lily's room is black.  I didn't want to use black.

I don't know if these will hang here forever (heck...I know they won't).  For now, they are an inexpensive option...and I like them.

A couple more Lily's room projects in the next couple days...

Valentine's Day

Beverly's Projects

http://adventuresofhomeschoolingnoah.blogspot.com/
http://lefevretimes.blogspot.com/

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I think we need a theme for posting. Let's start with Valentine's Day. Send me your ideas for V Day projects you've done. Send them to scrapbookercathy@yahoo.com. Come on...you know you want to...do it right now! :O)

I don't have any scrapbook pages, but I have a couple of cards that I've made. I'll add them later today.

By the way...anyone have any suggestions on how to get a good picture of our crafts??? I tried to take pictures of my cards last night and they look washed out. I'm going to see what happens if I turn the flash off. I'm also wondering if scanning them might work. Suggestions appreciated!

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Beverly, you rock!!!! Thanks for your cute projects you just sent (pictures above). I'm going to try to get a picture of Lily and make her into a little cupid. Woooooo hooooooo! This is going to be fun!!!!

Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to post my pictures of my cards.

First Post

I posted about my Cricut on my other blog, http://www.awalkinlilysgarden.blogspot.com/, a while back. I got some messages from other scrapbooking mamas. I thought it might be fun to start a blog to share our paper craft ideas.

So.....I'm going to need help with this. I am hoping that this can be a community effort. Please send me pictures of your paper craft items along with your name. I will post them on the blog to share with others.

I do most of my crafting by myself. So I'm hoping to get some great ideas from all of you!!! Please send your tips, photos of your projects, great finds, websites, etc. to me at my special e-mail account: scrapbookercathy@yahoo.com