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;