From cheap to cheerful

I've had a small collection of magazine pictures and ads in a box beside my bed for some time, and I thought it was about time I did something with them. And a particularly fruitful visit to the local dollar store provided me with the perfect opportunity.
I bought a couple of cheap photo frames that I thought I could unify with a little white spray paint and create a cluster of pictures on an empty wall of our room.

Thankfully I had some leftover spray paint from the last project, so this is going to be turning cheap into cheerful! It only took two coats and about an hour to dry and voila!

I decided to upgrade the frame from my paint chip wall art I created about a month back so that everything was matchy-matchy!

I should have waited until it was morning to take these pics as the light isn't great in our room, but I think you get the picture (pun intended). I highly recommend using cheap frames over buying a match set. In contrast I bought my holiday picture frames from Freedom for $60, and these three frames cost half of that, including the spray paint!

Google is a wonderful thing...

I often wonder what my life would be like if there was no such thing as google. I would never have discovered why the sky is blue, how cameras work (but seriously I still think it's magic), the ever-addictive Facebook, my ultimate time waster Pinterest and the dozens of blogs that I read from authors around the world.

It was during my daily morning blog read that I discovered an interesting article about a design workshop that's coming to Brisbane. The School with Megan Morton  offers tuition from the best-of-the-best craftspeople inside the industry and gives an insight into the coveted worlds of craft, styling and design. Crafternoons and make-it-yourself lessons from specially selected teachers are structered with all levels of experience in mind.

One of the clases I was particularly interested in was a screen printing class by Rachel Castle. A little googling helped me to discover a little more about her and quickly I entered the wonderful world of Castle and Things.

Sadly for me, the class is only being offered in their Hobart Roadshow, but I'm going to keep my eyes peeled in the blogger world for more upcoming dates in the hopes I may learn how to create some of these pieces myself.

 

**I've created a link to my favourite blogs on the right hand side of the page. Check them out and you might find something you like! **

Cheat's Way Out

It's been well over two months since Steve and I came back from our whirlwind holiday in the New York and Canada. So it's a little embarassing to say we haven't even printed our holiday snaps, let alone hang them.
So I popped off to Harvey Norman to have the pics printed for a bargain price of $8 for about 20 of the best ones! And the best part was it only took 10mins. Gone are the days of dropping off a roll of film and coming back 24 hours later, only to discover all your pictures have your thumb smudged across them.

Doing some research I thought Ikea would be the way to go for pictures frames, as I was looking for a range of sizes and with white frames. I struck gold however at Freedom Furniture who were selling ten frames for $80, but I timed my shopping trip perfectly with a 3 day sale and got them for $60!

So pretty, right?

I've always been really bad at hanging pictures and getting them straight. But I found a really good idea on Pinterest to get a cluster of pictures looking just right.

I popped the photos in their frames and  lay them out on some newspaper, finding the arrangement I wanted and traced around them.

It was just a matter of cutting out each little square and then taping the newspaper to the wall where I wanted them to hang. I used my handy spirit level app on my iPhone to get the paper straight, so as long as it was right, the rest would be.

Putting a little pencil mark where the hook would go on the wall, it was then simply a matter of placing the adhesive command strip hook on the wall and attaching the photos into the cut out hole.

...excuse the messy bed. There was a lot of jumping around on it after I succeeded!

Voila!

$7 art!

Keeping a budget is tricky business! So I've been looking out for some fun, inexpensive projects that create a lot of bang for your buck. I recently purchased a design book by bloggers Young House Love  which has some amazing ideas for Sunday projects.

I spotted a great little piece of wall art that I thought would be manageable on a busy weekend, add some much needed colour to our walls and the best bit- cheap as chips!

So I went down to the nearby $1 store and purchased a medium size frame for a whole $7! And after a visit to the hardware store I nabbed a collection of paint chips for free!

Snipping them into thin rectangular strips, I lined them up to create a chevron shape design.

I used an old glue stick to adhere them to a white piece of card. And about 20 minutes later- ta da!

I'm pretty happy with the overall affect! I think I might opt to spray paint the frame white and add a few more items on the wall in a bit of a cluster when I get some more time.