Gallery Wall in the New Craft Room

The big craft room reveal post got so long that I absolutely have to break down the decorating projects and organization into separate posts.

Today is all about my fun (and full) gallery wall over my office desk/counter.

I have pieces that I've collected over the years along with art and gifts from my padawans, several Hobby Lobby finds, and a couple of craft projects.
I knew I wanted some wood elements on the wall to add warmth so I added the shelf from Hobby Lobby, had Bass hang a piece of pallet wood to create a floating shelf, and then I painted a piece of pallet wood with Romans 12:12.

The other big wood piece is a pallet wood shelf unit that Bass made to hold my still-growing Funko Pop and Funko Pocket Pop collection.

Totally free. Well, the shelf was free. The Funkos...not so much.

Other than painting a bunch of random frames white to coordinate them, I also wrapped an old hook with twine to make a ukulele hanger.

The fabrics I chose for my new space, to match with my existing area rug, are from the Moda Granny Chic and Farm Girl Vintage collections. I had just scraps left-over after sewing other things so I made this cute hexie hoop for my gallery wall.

I ironed the pieces on to fusible interfacing and then top-stitched over the seams, using a zig-zag stitch.

I'd still like to buy an air plant for my shelf, but that'll wait until our stay-at-home orders are lifted. I like having all my pretties above my desk! What do you look at when you sit down to work?

More craft room posts: 

Sewing Projects for Craft Room Decorating

Sewing and Office Organization

Papercrafting Organization Part 1

Papercrafting Organization Part 2

Die Cut Organization

Paper Organization

Stamp Organization

Craft Room Sources

Linking up at:
Tutorials and Tips

Inspire Me Monday

A Morning Cup of Joe 

Flaunt It Friday

Sentimental Souvenir Tray

I put away the patriotic decor after July 4th and dug out the summer stuff. With a few tweaks from last year, the mantel was finished.

 

The coffee table was a different story. I have not liked how I've set that up so I was on the hunt for something new. What I found was this:

Tray on clearance for $3 at Hobby Lobby; The cork roll, small bottles, and mini tags also from Hobby Lobby.

The tray was on clearance. Perhaps because it was a crazy print. I used some craft paint on the edges and sides.

This was try #1 with a paint color. It didn't work.

When the paint was dry, I glued a piece of the cork roll to the bottom.

I put sand from beaches that we've traveled to in each of the bottles and put the name of the beach and the year on the mini tags.

To finish it off, I added shells we've collected on vacation, and I printed two vintage-looking, sea-themed, clip-art postcards.

Much better than what we had previously. Other summer decor includes our entry cupboard:

And dining room buffet:

Summer's on it's way out! Soak up those last rays!

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

Sunday: It's Overflowing; 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; 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;

Gray Ombre Dresser

Soprano's room re-do is now 98% done due to some new furniture! Huzzah! :)

We fixed some issues with the paint and repainted the whole room, made an art gallery, got new curtains and bed linens, created embroidery hoop art, and repurposed an old drawer into a photo display. With the room re-do, we started considering replacing her bedroom furniture. The dresser was only 3-drawers and becoming to small for a tweenager's wardrobe. It matched the desk so we ended up selling the whole set to help pay for some new pieces.

I found the dresser at our local Habitat Re-Store. (Well, they posted it on their Facebook page and drove over there almost immediately to snag it.)

It had a weird, wood-look faux paint finish. Bass sanded it down so I could prime and paint it.

It took two coats of primer and four coats of paint to cover. The dresser frame is Olympic Crumb Cookie, the color of the trim in our house. For the drawers, I decided to do a gray ombre. I thought about mixing the paint myself but went with (the much easier) paint samples from Lowe's. I would have preferred a semi-gloss, not a satin, finish but for $5, it was worth it.
The drawer colors from top to bottom are: Seashell Gray, Filtered Shade (the same color as Soprano's walls), Rocky Bluffs, Cathedral Stone, and Rugged Suede. (All Valspar.)

 To make the insides just as pretty, I lined them with decorative paper. ($2 from Michael's).

 

The finishing touches were a silver spray paint over the original brass hardware and a new mirror (Hobby Lobby) and dresser scarf (my fabric stash.)

And yes, this photo is staged. As of right now, there's a bunch of tween "treasures" sitting on top. :)

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

Sunday: It's Overflowing; 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; 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;

Featured at 24 Cottonwood Lane
and at 
 

Horse Pallet Art

Soprano's room re-do is coming along. After painting, we decorated with some loaded up picture gallery shelves and with embroidery hoops. Our next project was to upcycle an old pallet into more art for this horse-themed room. I liked this version via Pinterest and wanted to create my own.

Bass got an old pallet from our local Habitat Re-Store. He dismantled it and cut the boards to the length I wanted. After attaching the boards together with some thin wood boards, he also added a metal hanger.

 The hanger thing is cool and all but the front is the pretty part. :) I cut a horse shape (from Cricut's Old West cartridge) out of vinyl and put it on the boards. Then I dry-brushed over the vinyl with the same color paint as her trim (Olympic Crumb Cookie). When it was dry, I peeled the vinyl off and voila. Bass sanded a few parts where I got a little heavy-handed with the paint for this final result.

Now it's the feature piece that hangs above her bed. (We're looking to get her a different bed this spring which is why it's hanging a little high at the moment.)

Just a few more projects to go before the room reveal!

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;

Embroidery Hoop Art

Another bit of art I wanted to tackle for Soprano's room was embroidery hoops with fabric. I found tons of super cute ideas on Pinterest.

I found a few hoops at a local craft re-uzit store and had one on-hand already. The two smaller ones were inexpensive purchases at JoAnn's. I painted them all with the yellow spray paint I used on the picture frames. I found all of the fabrics at JoAnn's too.

The larger two hoops only have fabric in them.

I used the flowers on the gray fabric to add buttons.

I made a little banner from bits of the other fabrics using the Stampin Up Pennant Punch as a template.

The last one was the most time intensive but is my favorite. I used the pattern of the fabric to add embroidery stitches as embellishment. I did have to Google how to make French Knots to refresh my memory but the rest was pretty easy.

Altogether, they hang on the wall adjacent to the picture gallery shelves.

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;

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;