Creating Inexpensive Art for Gallery Shelves

Over Christmas and New Year's, Bass had time off so I figured it might be time for a house project. After debating on a few possibilities, it seemed that working on Soprano's room would be the easiest and cheapest project. It didn't quite turn out as expected but the end results were worth it.

When we moved in four years ago, we painted everything in the house. For some reason, the paint never stuck to the trim and doors in Soprano's room. We've been battling peeling paint this whole time. I thought we had sanded and primed for the original paint job but maybe we missed her room. Whatever the reason, we needed to scrape all of her trim, including her door and the radiator, then sand and prime it. Bass and Tenor tackled most of the grunt work, and I took over for the painting.

Soprano's old 'little girl' room

All the trim in our house is the same color, Olympic's Crumb Cookie, and I had a quarter gallon left from previous jobs so that was easy. But we thought that if we were going to pull everything out of Soprano's room to scrape, sand, and paint trim, we should probably consider repainting her walls at the same time. I didn't want to pick new wall paint unless we were sure what the decor scheme would be which caused a trip to Christmas Tree Shops where we found a new bedspread set.

We went from a very pink little girl room to a gray, horse-themed  tween space. To make the change happen, I wanted to hang some gallery shelves and fill them with new artwork. I figure the art will be easy to change out down the road and keep us from putting a million holes in the walls.

I repainted a bunch of frames we had on hand and filled them free printables.

Find this printable in multiple colors here

I used a page from an old calendar for this one:

I found an idea to use paper strips cut from magazines on Pinterest. Rather than cut the silhouette first and piece the strips, I glued the strips down onto cardstock first, then took my horse shape (from Cricut's Old West cartridge) and traced it on the back. I cut it out and then attached it some patterned paper (DCWV "Green Stack").

I made a monogram (from Cricut's Everyday Fonts cartridge) with buttons and framed it in a shadowbox frame. *Helpful tip: trace your monogram or shape onto your base (fabric or cardstock) and then use small buttons to fill the bottom layer. It's easier to fill the shape or letter with small buttons and then layer larger ones on top. If you start with big buttons on the bottom, it's harder to fill in small gaps. *This tip may be offered because of user experience.

I also redid this letter monogram that used to hang in Soprano's toddler room at our old house. The red, ladybug look didn't fit the new horse theme. It wasn't hard to peel off the old paper and recover it.

We found this piece at Goodwill. It was in a really chunky (really ugly) dark wood frame-thing. It was all built-in and very strange looking. Bass demo-ed it for me and cut a piece of thin wood from his stash and added the clips.

Because I felt crafty, I painted two canvases. I did a fingerprint one of pussywillow branches. To get the dimension in the catkins, I dipped my finger in a bit of yellow, then green, then gray.

and I used this stencil to paint a dahlia.

I made this one from some fabrics I had left-over from the embroidery hoop art that I framed like this:

I used silver Liquid Pearls to outline the flower.

 Here's the finished look:

Underneath the shelves you can see the first of two shadowboxes for Soprano's TaeKwonDo belts. We're trying to flatten out her other belts to make them fit into the frame. I just got a second one to hang on the other side of her birthday party canvas for additional belts.

I obviously didn't have any trouble filling those shelves up. Perhaps we should have made them longer!

Cheap art costs:

3 frames from Salvation Army $1

Small shadowbox frame $5

Buttons for monogram $3

Belt shadowboxes 2 @ $15 each

Horse oil painting from Goodwill $3

Clipboard $1.50

3 cans of spray paint (yellow, gray, white) $15

3 12x12 frames, 3 4x4 frames, 5 8x10 frames, 2 canvases, acrylic paint, scrapbook paper - on hand

Total: $58.50 

Not bad for all that art and a way to showcase her TKD belts!

Linking up to some or all of these great blog parties:

Sunday: Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming;
Monday: Inspire Me Monday at Sand and Sisal; Tutorials and Tips at Home Stories A to Z; It's Overflowing; Monthly Before and After at Thrifty Decor Chick
Wednesday: Wicked Awesome Wednesday at Handy Man, Crafty Woman; Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts; 
Friday: Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest; Flaunt it Friday at Chic on a Shoestring;

School Summary - Daniel Boone and the Revolutionary War

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

A Summary of January 5-16

We enjoyed our Christmas and New Year break very much. It just went by way too fast. We started a "small" renovation project on Soprano's room that was supposed to be quick, easy, and cheap. Three and half weeks later, we're still working on it, which made starting school again a little rough. The younglings were slightly more motivated than I was which helped. We've actually reached the end of the 2nd quarter and the half-way point of our year. Yay!
Here's what we did:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

Language Arts (Grammar, Reading, and Writing; Spelling for Soprano)
Tenor finished up "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" with a mini research paper about Nat Bowditch. They're both working on 3 paragraph research reports on important figures from the Revolutionary War for writing. Tenor chose George Washington while Soprano picked Benjamin Franklin.

Electives:

Typing, Greek (Tenor), Spanish (Tenor), Home Ec (Soprano)
Tenor finished Greek Level 2 and began Level 3.

My Father's World Exploration to 1850

We touched on Daniel Boone and then spent two weeks studying the people and events of the Revolutionary War.

Bible: This year we're doing an in-depth study of the book of James and attempting to memorize the entire book. We're now reviewing chapters 1and 2 and beginning to memorize chapter 3.

Science: Since we did all of our botany work, using AIG's The World of Plants, over the summer, I'll try to give an overview of the experiments and demonstrations that we did. Currently the younglings are working on a botany lapbook from In the Hands of a Child.
They're reading a section and doing an activity three days per week to review what we learned.
These weeks we would have covered lessons 9-14. That included studying monocots and dicots and doing a seed dissection.

Locating seeds in various types of fruit, veggies, and a pine cone:

Seed dispersal (via water):

We learned about different types of roots.

We also talked about stems and stem structures.

History: We read about Daniel Boone. It was a good refresher since we had visited his birthplace earlier in the school year. For the Revolutionary War, we did lots and lots of reading. And lots of coloring:

I added in Johnny Tremain as a read-aloud, and the younglings also really enjoyed quite a bit of the Liberty's Kids DVDs.
We skipped making Hasty Pudding and making a quill pen and berry ink.

I added in some map work from MapTrek (The Explorations of Daniel Boone). No extra timeline pieces though.

Other MFW: 

Music: We learned about Chopin. For our hymn study, we went back to  "O For a Thousand Tongues" which we had put on hold to do Gloria! from Kim at notconsumed.com. We spent one week on it and then had a week of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." I got smart too. After 19 weeks, I finally made photocopies of the hymnal pages and put them into a binder. So now rather than having each of the younglings hold the hymnal open for me to play, the pages stay flat.

Art: We read about Constable and tried out some sky studies.

Extras:

Web:

You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for weeks 15-34.
Botany extras (we didn't use them)
Revolutionary War lapbook (we didn't use it yet but I still might add it in)

Daniel Boone lapbook (we didn't use it)

Crown or Colony? game

Drive Thru History: Boston and the Beginnings of the Revolution

Drive Thru History: Battle Hill

Drive Thru History: Crossing the Delaware

Drive Thru History: Saratoga

Flowering Plants video

Flower resources

Audio of Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty" Speech

Monticello virtual tour

Videos:

Liberty's Kids
Daniel Boone (by Good Times)
Ladies of Liberty: Boston 1775 (Learn Our History)

Favorite Books: 

George by Frank Keating
Sleds on Boston Common by Louise Borden
Sybil Ludington's Midnight Ride by Marsha Amstel
The Declaration of Independence from A to Z by Catherine Osornio
Those Rebels, John and Tom by Barbara Kerley
Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May? by Jean Fritz
Why Don't You Get a Horse, Sam Adams? by Jean Fritz

Make a Card Monday - Card Swap 2.0

I had another card swap night at my house. Here's what everyone brought to make:

I love the bright colors. She used the Scor-Pal to create embossed lines on the Thinking of You card and added a flower embellishment from Recollections.

SS's cards

 

The little touches on these cards are perfect. I really like the embossing on both layers of the pumpkin and the cute little orange gems on the Thanks card. She also embossed the golf ball on the birthday card. Cute, right?

MH's cards

 

 

I've actually used a similar layout as the Hello card. A new color palette makes it different from the anniversary cards I made though. She used the hexagon punch from Stampin Up!. The Christmas card used the "Christmas Lost and Found" paper pad from My Mind's Eye. Another spin on a geometric layout.

MB's cards

 

We add another friend join us this time. Her cards were a fun twist and included more than just paper. The eyeballs on the turkey crack me up every time. She has a side-business doing floral arrangements so she added a fern to the Christmas card to add dimension.

CH's cards

 This was a fun set to put together. Each gal had her own arrangement of circles which made each set completely original. Except for mine. I was too tired to come up with my own so I copied the original exactly. LOL Sometimes it's just as fun to glue and place.

JC's first card with matching gift bag and tag

This fall card has great texture too. I really like the woodgrain embossing folder paired with the burlap strip. This gal is a huge fan of Stickles (glitter glue) so of course, her card included lots of glittery prettiness.

JC's second card

 Along with the extra cards I made from my design, my card stash is in pretty good shape. For now. :)

Be Still Chalkboard Tray and Winter Mantel

 I was going to title this post something like, "A 15-Minute Chalkboard Tray" but if you've ever attempted a quick DIY project you realize how it really goes down. You've never had a crafting session take way longer than you thought it would? Well, let me give you a behind the scenes look of how one of these blog posts really happens.

This is my winter mantel this year. Similar to last year's with a slight change. Remember, the mirror that used to be above the fireplace moved across the room to the piano. I really like the window that we put in its place but without the ORB frame, the bottom of the mantel feels a little too heavy. I thought maybe some chalkboard art on the window would balance things out.

I originally thought I'd paint something (a plaque or canvas, maybe) with chalkboard paint or buy a pre-made chalkboard and then draw my art on it. (Behind the scenes: Look around house for suitable thing to paint. No wood. Canvas on-hand is too big and too square. Hit craft store to no avail. Head to thrift store.) Yay for me, I found this tray for $3.

So now I have a tray. (BTS: Maybe I could paint it with chalkboard paint and be artistic. Hmm...spend several hours on Pinterest looking for chalkboard tutorials. Only problem, I'm not a great artist. I'm a good trace and copy person but I wasn't sure how that would work on a chalkboard. Decide it's too much work.) Since painting my own chalkboard seemed a bit ambitious, so I looked online for something pre-made. (BTS: Several hours=no luck) Since I couldn't find quite what I wanted, I figured I could design my own. On Pinterest I found some great pins with free chalkboard font suggestions. After I downloaded a bunch of them, I put this together in MS Publisher. (BTS: again after way longer than I thought it would take. True to form, it didn't turn out exactly like I pictured in my mind.)

To get the right size, I measured the tray and inserted a gray oval into my picture to make sure my text would fit.

 Bass printed it for me at work on 11x17 paper. I cut it out following the template line I had printed. (BTS: the tray wasn't a perfect Publisher circle. So now I'll have to paint the tray anyway to make sure the edges don't show through.)

So just to make sure the tray base wouldn't show around the edges of my print, I taped it off and spray painted it.

 

All painted! (BTS: the paint bled through the tape along the inside edge of the tray. I had to get out a paint brush to hand paint the edges too.)

(BTS: After even more trimming on the print...) I used my ATG to tape the sign onto the tray.

A good winter verse when the world outside is quiet and muffled with snow - Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God..."

The almost last step was to figure out how I was going to hang the tray on the window. Easy-peasy, use ribbon. (BTS: Do I have any ribbon that will work? Lots of ribbon that's too thin. Ribbon of a good width but all in the wrong color. I don't really want to have go to the craft store again. It's too cold to go out. And I don't want to have to pay $5 for a roll of ribbon when I only need 12ish inches. One more place to check... ooh, that could work. Now how do I attach the ribbon?) I used some duct tape from Bass's stash to attach the ribbon. It's on the back so it doesn't matter if it's ugly, right?

See those cute Jamberry wraps on my fingers? They're Feeling Festive and Gray and White Polka. :)

Super easy project -- done! (BTS: finally!)

And in place...

The other winter mantel change, sheet music pillar candles. This project really did only take a few minutes (after I went to the store to get candles, measured them, and cut the sheet music to size). The back of these look a little ugly too.

 But they're fine from the front. :)

Fonts used: Return to Sender, Chalk Hand Lettering Shaded, KG Eyes Wide Open, It Was a Good Day, Chalk Line Outline, and CK Holiday Spirit.

Linking up to some or all of these great blog parties:

Sunday: Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming;
Monday: Inspire Me Monday at Sand and Sisal; Tutorials and Tips at Home Stories A to Z;
Tuesday: One Project at a Time at A Bowl Full of Lemons
Wednesday: Wicked Awesome Wednesday at Handy Man, Crafty Woman; Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts; Thursday: It's Overflowing;
Friday: Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest; Flaunt it Friday at Chic on a Shoestring;
Categorically Crafting: Christmas at Someday Crafts; Christmas Spectacular at The Shabby Creek Cottage

School Summary - Spanish Missions, Hamilton, Jones, and Christmas

A Summary of December 15-24

Another busy week and a half of school led us up to Christmas! Despite being very excited for the holiday, the younglings did stick to the plan and got their schoolwork done.
Here's what we did:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

Language Arts (Grammar, Reading, and Writing; Spelling for Soprano)
We had a full week of school, then a three-day week. They just continued along in their math, grammar, and spelling books as usual.

Electives:

Typing, Greek (Tenor), Spanish (Tenor), Home Ec (Soprano)
Soprano's Home Ec lesson was on candy making. Perfect timing since I make caramels every year to give to family and neighbors.

My Father's World Exploration to 1850

With the holiday schedule, we did one full week of MFW and then stuck with the three Rs for the week of Christmas. We're moving along through history and beginning to learn about all the events that led up to the War for American Independence. This week's work was kind of a summary of what was going on in the world right before the war.  We touched on Italy, Spain, the Corsairs, the Turkish Empire, Spain, Poland, China, and the West Indies as well as the Spanish Mission on the West coast.

Bible: This year we're doing an in-depth study of the book of James and attempting to memorize the entire book. We continued to review chapter 1and finished memorizing chapter 2.

Science: Since we did all of our botany work, using AIG's The World of Plants, over the summer, I'll try to give an overview of the experiments and demonstrations that we did. Currently the younglings are working on a botany lapbook from In the Hands of a Child.
They're reading a section and doing one activity per day to review what we learned.
This week we would have covered lessons 6-8. That included examining grass outside, determining whether a tree is deciduous or evergreen, and studying trees (including drawing it, labeling it, making bark rubbings, and collecting leaves/needles/fruit).
We also did a germination experiment that showed how seeds need water, oxygen, and warmth to grow.

History:Like I said, history was an overview of all sorts of areas of the world right before the time of the Revolutionary War. We had lots of reading and book basket time. The younglings also created their own cross-stitch sampler patterns on graph paper. Neither wanted to try it out on fabric.

No extra map work or timeline pieces this week.

Other MFW: 

Music: We pulled out Mozart again, whom we studied during our Creation to the Greeks year. He was a contemporary during this time period of history. We listened to The Story of Mozart in Words and Music and used The Young Scholar's Guide to Classical Music as well as Meet the Great Composers. For our hymn study, I decided to put "O For a Thousand Tongues" on hold to do Gloria! from Kim at notconsumed.com. They had enjoyed last week's "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" hymn that it seemed like a good fit to continue with more Christmas hymns. We did one of the Gloria! hymns each day.

Art: We read about Gilbert Stuart and Audubon.

Extras:

Web:

You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for weeks 15-34.
Botany extras (we didn't use them)
Seeds video

Audubon resources here and here

Audubon paintings here and here

Cross-stitch sampler patterns

Videos:

no extra videos for week 17

Favorite Books: 

Mozart Finds a Melody by Stephen Costanza
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons

School Summary - French and Indian War, George III, and The Stamp Act

Coloring from George Washington's World

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

A Summary of December 1-12

Well, December, Christmas, and our holiday break were so busy that I'm just getting to blogging about the schoolwork that did. We did actually get stuff done in December. This year is the first in a long time that I wasn't working or involved in anything at church during the holidays. Yet I felt so busy preparing for Christmas plus homeschooling. It was crazy!
Here's what we did:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

Language Arts (Grammar, Reading, and Writing)

Electives:

Typing, Greek (Tenor), Spanish (Tenor), Home Ec (Soprano)

My Father's World Exploration to 1850

We're moving along through history and beginning to learn about all the events that led up to the War for American Independence.

Bible: This year we're doing an in-depth study of the book of James and attempting to memorize the entire book. We continued to review chapter 1and learned chapter 2 through verse 24.

Science: We had finished AIG's The World of Animals and were slated to begin our botany studies. This is where we have given ourselves a huge break. We did all of our botany work, using AIG's The World of Plants, over the summer. I'll try to give an overview of the experiments and demonstrations that we did. Currently the younglings are working on a botany lapbook from In the Hands of a Child.
They're reading a section and doing one activity per day to review what we learned.
So for these two weeks we would have covered lessons 1-5. That included an alive or not scavenger hunt, a game called "Animal or Plant?"

Plant or Animal? game

creating a mnemonic to remember the classification system, and examining flowers outside.
We skipped making a cell model because we did something similar last year when we studied human anatomy.

History: We left Asia to head back to Europe to talk about three pointless wars. Truly pointless. No one gained any new land or people, and all those wars affected the colonies in North America.
To help us remember them, we played the Name That War game from the SOTW Activity Book
Following those wars, we went right into another conflict, the French and Indian War. That war was huge in setting up the colonies for declaring their independence.
Of course, King George III played a small part too. We learned about him and his Stamp Act.

I added in some map work from Story of the World (Three Wars) and some timeline pieces from Homeschool in the Woods (French & Indian War and George III).

Other MFW: 

Music: We spent two weeks on Handel, whom we studied during our Creation to the Greeks year. He was a contemporary during this time period of history. We listened to The Story of Handel in Words and Music and used The Young Scholar's Guide to Classical Music as well as Meet the Great Composers. For our hymn study, we learned "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing".

Art: We drew animals, then read about American artists, including Benjamin West.

Extras:

Web:

You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for weeks 15-34.
Botany extras (we didn't use them)
Plant Hunter game
Mount Vernon virtual tour
Plants video
Cursed Plants video
French and Indian War lapbook (we didn't use it)

Videos:

no extra videos for weeks 15 and 16

Favorite Books: 

Handel Who Knew What He Liked by M.T. Anderson
The Diary of Mary Jemison, Captured by the Indians by Connie and Peter Roop
Lives of Extraordinary Women (Catherine the Great) by Kathleen Krull
Can't You Make Them Behave, King George? by Jean Fritz
The Boy Who Loved to Draw: Benjamin West by Barbara Brenner