Did-It-Myself Art

As FH and I have slowly been making over our house, we've run into one dilemma over and over and over again. Money. Or lack thereof.

This problem always seems to affect me more since I'm in charge of all the "little details" (i.e. decorating the whole house). So I've had to get creative a time or two in figuring out how to make a big impact on little funds.

This project is my money-saving solution to finding art for our huge bedroom wall. I knew I needed something that was a decent size. No small fry here. Traditional art (canvas or framed prints) was out of my reach. So I had to come up with something else.

I loved the idea of vinyl wall art. There was one small problem though . . . my textured walls. I loved the idea of vinyl art, but I wasn't very eager to find out how it would look on the bumpy walls of my bedroom.

My solution to this was to order the vinyl shapes that I liked and I put them on canvas instead.

I painted the canvas a nice soft gray (extra from painting the office), then adhered the vinyl to the canvases. As most crafters know, things don't always go according to plan. Turns out, vinyl doesn't really want to be friends with canvas. So it took some force and a lot of spray glue (and even sometimes super glue), but I got my vinyls to stick. And I LOVE how it turned out!!

To save money on the birds, I ordered 2 packs (one in white and one in turquoise). Then I cut the packs in half and spray painted them red and orange. This kept me from having to buy 4 packs of clings just because I wanted four colors of birds.

Another small problem I had was in the brown branches. I ordered them in a soft tan, but once they were paired with the gray background, they sort of faded away. This resulted in my spending 3 days hunched over canvases hand painting all the branches a darker color. It took a lot of time and ibuprofen, but it's probably the project I'm most proud of!

I found some other great do-it-yourself art projects that would have worked just as well (and I've filed away for future use).

Here's something I found at Simply Modern Mom. She painted some tree branches on a couple of canvases, and then cut up some magazine pages as the leaves! I wish I had thought of it!! So simple, yet so pretty!

Here's an idea using ceiling medallions from DIY Ideas. I still need art for above my sofa. Maybe I should try this?

With art ideas that are this easy, your bare walls should be very afraid! :o)