Decor on the Cheap

Happy Monday, y'all! Yes, I said "y'all" and to my defense, I used that word long before moving to the bluegrass. Besides, if you've ever visited Lexington you'd see that it's really not all that redneck... it's more Midwestern with some South mixed in... or what I like to call perfection. But I digress...

Today I thought I'd post a few projects that I've been working on around the house. As a disclaimer, let me just say that my level of craftiness is pretty low and most of my projects end up looking fairly... well... home-made. But, these are just a few things that I'm quite proud of:

A few months ago, we moved Lilly out of Jake's room so they'd both have their own space. Since Lilly's walls were bare, I had a blank slate and wanted to work with what we had... hanging these four pictures close together did the trick:

(Going clockwise)-

Top Left: old mirror we had with an Uppercase Living decal (a bird on a limb since it's hard to see)

Bottom Left: Cross-stitched prayer that my mom made for me and hung in my room as a baby. We painted the yellow frame dark brown to match eveything else

Bottom Right: A picture of Lil in a $5 Wal-Mart frame. Their frames are cheap (and you can tell sometimes) but they work.

Top Right: Used to be the picture below, but I covered it with a piece of scrapbook paper, used a stencil to paint on the chandelier, and voila!

Next up was a garage sale find for $4. I mod-podged the Miami Dolphins portion to match the letters that I did awhile back (seen here) and we actually had the "Faith, Hope, and Love" wooden cut-outs already (and Josh made them). The woods matched perfectly, too! I do want to print out her monogram on a circle and stick that on there, but you get the gist here:

I also used cheap frame-less frames (if that's how you describe them?) and a mat to frame one of her birth announcements and a greeting card and hung those alongside a canvas my (much more talented) sister, Mindy, made:

Her room is bright, sunny, and happy... just like our little Lil.

Next up was Jake's space. He still had quite a bit of stuff on his walls from before she moved out, but there was one big wall that I really wanted to update. Since he loves trains, I Googled "train stencil" and came across a pretty basic design. I printed them at home, cut them out, and used acrylic paint on very cheap corkboard tiles.  I used a ruler and a permanent marker for the tracks. Hereis the result:



We already had the "Train up your child..." picture and the "Let him sleep" vinyl expression and metal board is also from Uppercase Living. Are you starting to see a trend? Yeah, this is why I sell the stuff!

My only other note-worthy project involved an 8x10 frame that had broken glass, a mat, and some scrapbook paper. Ever wonder what to do with a fram that has lost its glass? I covered the matting in contact paper and then printed out my favorite quote from one of Jake's favorite books (On The Night You Were Born). Then I mod-podged over it all with a paint brush and spray-acrylic'ed (is that a word?) it to no end. It's hard as a rock and the frame has life again!

So no, they are not perfect, but I definitely love the way everything turned out! It's amazing what you can do with things you already have... just go through your closets and find old frames, mirrors, etc. that you haven't used in years and get creative! With some glue, a printer, and a little imagination you can turn old junk into something worth putting on display. The next room I'm working on is our guest bedroom / my office, so hopefully I'll have updates to post soon!

Have a great start to your week!