Paint Chip Wall Art

Our entryway gets a lot of intense afternoon sun and the artwork I hung up here eight years ago is super faded.  I suddenly decided I needed something cheap, easy, and fast to replace my faded print- enter paint chip wall art.

 

I did have to purchase the frame- you can't go wrong with IKEA (unless you are trying to replace kitchen cabinet hinges, but that is another story!)

Why do I have hundreds of paint chips in a shoe box?  Doesn't everyone?  Mysteries if the universe.  I had plenty of samples on hand to fill my fairly large frame.  Most of them came from when I was trying to pick a new front door color, so the colors work well in the entryway.

A paper cutter makes quick work of turning the paint chips into parallelograms-  a lot of them.  I just used a glue stick to glue them to the paper that came with the frame.

 

Insert into frame.  Done.  Not as easy as just framing a poster, but pretty easy.  I was not very precise while cutting my shapes out and the end product is more sloppy than I hoped.  Not bad from far away, but up close I want it to look cleaner.  I might redo this project... someday.  Also, I hung it on the nail from the previous artwork and I think it needs to be moved, but for now it will live here just fine.

Mendhi Style Name Sign

I finally finished A's sign to hang over the crib- yeah! It was not a total disaster!  Although I think of myself as pretty crafty, I'm not much of an artist and I'd usually consider something like this beyond my abilities.  I'm so proud of how it turned out.

 

I bought a wooden sign from Hobby Lobby and painted over the existing artwork with dark brown craft paint.  Next I sketched out the letters with a pencil and then drew over the pencil marks with a white paint pen (extra fine point).  I free handed the mendhi "extras" and the interior of the letters.  My mistakes ( and there were a lot) I had to paint over with brown and then I tried again with the paint pen.  A little painstaking, but I like the results!

 

I mostly used books to practice drawing mendhi (or mehndi, or henna, etc) style designs.  I haven't tried anything with actual henna on the skin, but hopefully that's my next step.  I hope my girls let me practice on them!

This book was great in that it started out really simple, then worked up to recreating designs.  The left page is the example and the right side is my attempt to copy it.

The sign is hanging over her crib with the gold foil India silhouette I bought and a piece of the elephant fabric that I love.

I am ready for my little girl to come home!  We've had a set back with our travel plans, but are still hoping we will be traveling soon and A will be sleeping in this crib before long!

 

 

 

Crafting for A

We are so excited to finally be traveling this summer to pick up our daughter from India.  I've had years to get things ready for her, but I'm feeling hurried to finish some projects I've been working on for her and her room.  Here's a little peak of what I've been up to...

A scrapbook collage.  I have certainly fallen in love with India over the last two years as we have tried to study as much about the culture as we can from so far away.  I can't wait to be there in person!  I love the colors, the architecture- India will never cease to inspire me I think.  I want to bring some of that inspiration into A's bedroom...

We will move the kids around when A comes home so the girls will share a room with eachother...

 

 I made blankets for all the kids for when they came home.  Here is A's- lots of bright colors to remind her of Delhi!

A new doll carrier for her new doll.  My mom bought this doll at a Cracker Barrel after I mentioned seeing some there.  The line is called Butterflies and they have lots of ethnicities and accesories.  This one reminds me of dolls my mom made for my sister and me when we were younger.  I have plans to make some clothes for her, but I might wait and see how into dolls A is.  My older daughter played very little with her dolls.

 

Fabric for more projects for A.  I haven't really bought any new clothes for her since I saved everything D wore.  I'm thinking of making some new dresses or using the elephants as a wall hanging?  I thought about make a whole cloth quilt, too.  I'll have to see what time allows!

I have purchased a couple things as well.  This gold foil print is from Ink & Hope on etsy.  It is beautiful!

I have always loved It's a Small World at Disneyland, and I especially love artwork from Mary Blair (an amazing artist that did a lot of work for Disney and did the design inspiration for Small World).  I'd love to find an India print by her, but I am settling for this doll from the Disney ride.  It plays "It's a Small World" in both English and Hindi so A will have some sounds from India as well. 

 

I have also fallen in love with Mehndi and am trying to learn the style from books.  This project will have it's own post when I am done, but here's a look at the mehndi inspired name plaque I'm working on for A.

These projects have been keeping me busy as we wait to everything that need to happen for us to bring A home.  Hopefully we only have a few more weeks to go!  I have also designed a t-shirt that we are selling to fund some travel expenses for picking her up.  You can find it here if you are interested in finding out more about our story

 

 



Homemade Sidewalk Chalk Paint

We are having a mellow summer this year, but D has big plans for all the crafty things she wants to do.  First up is chalk paints.  Her teacher filled me in on an easy, homemade version- cornstarch, water and food coloring.  I'm guessing there are actual "recipes" all over Pinterest.  These took about five minutes to mix up- she's been painting the driveway for days!

Thankful Tree #2

I posted about our Thankful Tree last year here.  We had fun doing it again this year.  This is how the tree turned out this time...

To preserve our thankfulness I pulled all of the words off the leaves and stuck them to a piece of card stock as a simple collage.  Now we can keep them from year to year.  It was fun to see what had changed in a year's time and what had stayed the same.  We certainly have so many things to be thankful for!

Football Birthday Party

We have been enjoying a great football season this year, so it was no surprise when my oldest asked for a football party for his eighth birthday.

Invites: 

"Thanks for coming to my party" cups.  It helped a lot to do this party during football season- I was able to source most things at Wal-mart.  Like these plastic party cups.  The flame footballs came from Oriental Trading.  Personalized name pennants were made from scrapbook papers and attached to glow sticks.  The cups also held football playing cards I "scored" in the Target dollar section, Denver Bronco tattoos from Bed, Bath and Beyond,  and foil wrapped chocolate footballs.

 

The spread:  I started with generic football colors green, white and brown, but used plenty of blue and orange because we are Broncos fans around here!

Plates, napkins, paper bowls, cupcake wrappers all from Wal-mart...

 

I used a football themed card stock sticker pack from my local scrapbook store to dress up the cupcakes and individual cake for I...

 

Yum! Chocolate covered strawberry footballs.  I think I ate half of these by myself...

 

We served store-bought pre-made cheese pizzas and added pepperoni footballs before baking...

 

 Soup cans covered with scrapbook paper for utensil holders...

 

Plastic yard line bunting and table cloths were all from Wal-mart.  I pulled anything football related from I's room for the party including this ceramic piggy bank (I think this was another Target dollar section find) and I displayed his new Broncos poster...

We were hoping to spend most of the party playing football outside, but it was snowing the day of the party. :(  So we ended up in the garage again.  My husband kept the kids entertained by making a quick  football obstacle course- run through the tires, tackle the punching bag, catch a perfectly thrown spiral.  All the kids got to put their Peyton Manning skills to test trying to throw through shapes cut out of a tarp.  I also broke down and bought a helmet shaped pinata from Target.  And I vowed No Pinatas! this year.

Disclaimer #1- my garage is never this clean...

 

 

Disclaimer #2- I have told my daughter that the orange and white skirt goes with her blue Bronco jersey, not the pink shirt.  And nothing goes with purple Crocs and black socks.  She just likes to do her own thing.

 

So football fun was had by all, even in the garage.  And our Broncos are heading to the SUPERBOWL (woo-hoo!!) so I am recycling everything for our Superbowl party. Yah!