Family Art Collage Wall

Hello again!  Today I want to show you my latest project, which solved two big problems at once.  One: what to do with mountains of kids' artwork.  Two: What to do with the very tall wall on the staircase landing in our entryway.  My kiddos love love love to create, so I always have a stack that needs showing off.  So I wanted to create a special place where we could display it.  I needed something that would be easy to rotate.  But when the boys and I worked on special pieces to contribute to our church art show, I knew those needed a permanent home.  Thus the idea for the collage wall was born.

I blogged about my mixed media piece here.

My mother-in-law made me this cute clipboard...

I may or may not have had to replace one of the clips and the word "artist" because my little "helpers" decided to disassemble it before I could put it up...

And that got me thinking about other ways I could display the kids' art by just clipping it up, but I wanted something that would really give their artwork some presence and show that we are proud to display it in our home.  Then (hooray!) I found these two enormous empty frames at a yard sale for $2 each.  They were a really gross maroon color, but a few coats of spray paint later they look fantastic.  My awesome friend Kelli contributed some chicken wire, which I attached to the back of the frame with a staple gun.

I let the kids decorate plain mini clothespins for attaching the artwork.

The kids really loved picking out their favorite pieces for our first display.  They did most of the cool projects they picked in the art classes they took this spring with my friend April Staker.  If you are at all local, I totally recommend her classes for kids -- the boys learned so much and grew to love creating so much more!

This is really an ideal solution for displaying lots of sizes and types of artwork.  They can either put in several small pieces, as shown above, or one really big piece.  They love to color on those big paper rolls from IKEA, so we have a lot of those.  As an extra bonus, hanging up those big pieces makes it really easy to take a good picture of it, so we can save the picture and eventually lose all the giant pieces of paper. :)

Oh, and here's a funny story.  I cut this vinyl saying out and put it up, but it just didn't seem right somehow.  It took me two days to realize that that wasn't what I meant to put up at all!  I meant to do "Home is where the he{art} is" but somewhere between my brain and setting it up on the computer it got switched to this.  What do you think?  Lucky mistake, or should I switch it?

Hanging this collage in the stairwell worked out perfectly because I can hang things both higher and lower than  I really could on a normal wall because you start out either below or above the whole thing anyway.  I have lots of room to expand, especially above, as we create more special pieces that we want to keep up more permanently.

Thanks for stopping by!

Table fit for a princess...

I was so darn excited when ScrapbookPal.com sent me the Once Upon a Princess to work with this month.  It is just chock full of the cutest, girliest art you could imagine.  (Is it so wrong that my first thought when I found out I was having a girl was that I could finally indulge all my girly papercrafting fantasies?)  My first project for the month was a no-brainer -- my little princess just turned two, and she is really into playing pretend.  I wanted to get her her own little table and chairs where she could have tea parties with her dollies (and her mommy, of course), but I certainly couldn't leave it just plain white!  I already had some yummy pink and green vinyl on hand, just the right colors for her bedroom, so I just got out my Gypsy and my Expression and went to town. :)

I started by measuring the table and deciding how big I wanted each element.  I chose the cute princess crown for the center, but substituted an Alphalicious "e" for the OUaP font so it would match what I've already done in her room.  This is where the Gypsy really shines -- it was so easy to just use the "hide contour" function to get rid of the OUaP "E", then I was able to group the two elements together so that I could resize and move them easily.  I surrounded the crown with this sweet scalloped circle, which is one of the labels.  I super<3 all the labels on OUaP -- so versatile!  I particularly like this shape because the scallops are not perfectly round, giving it more of a flower petal look.  That center element is 11.5".

I decided to place smaller flowers around the edges, as sort of place settings.  This super cute flower is actually one of the princesses' accessory, so again I used the "hide contour" function on the gypsy to hide the other accessories that I didn't want to cut.  Easy as pie!

For the chairs, I used the scallop border from Plantin Schoolbook, then made dots with the centers of the pink flowers on the table and a circle punch.  On the little stools, I just used a little flower punch on the leftover green vinyl from the center of the big green scallop circle in the center of the table.  Can't let that vinyl go to waste, after all...

I was just so pleased with how well this little table and chairs came out, and the little princess likes it, too!  It took this little set from feeling bland and mass-produced to something totally custom and cute!  And with the vinyl, we can easily change the decorations out as we change the decor in her room.  These may not be the first shapes you notice on Once Upon a Princess, but the style was just perfect for this project.  So don't forget, when you get a new cartridge, make sure you look at all the extra functions and layers -- you will find countless treasures!

Thanks for looking!  I hope you'll come back soon -- I have a lot more fun Once Upon a Princess projects planned for this month!

No Empty Chairs -- Decorative Plate

Hello, all!  I hope you're all starting to recover from the hustle, bustle, and fun of the holiday season, and that you had a wonderful and special time with your families.  We were busy, busy, but we had a wonderful time together.  And now I finally have a few minutes to start posting a few of my projects!  This first one is a decorative plate I made for my wonderful mom for her birthday.  The idea of "no empty chairs" came from a talk from Elder Henry B. Eyring, one of the leaders of our church, and it means that we want to have all our family together in Heaven.  My mom loved it so much she asked to have it engraved on her headstone, but I didn't think she should wait so long to enjoy it... :)  I bought the brown charger from a local home decor store, then I designed the vintage chair and flourishes and used SCAL to cut them out of gold and cream vinyl with my Cricut. 

Bits and Pieces

I realized I never did show the fun projects I made as Christmas presents. This first one is my favorite -- The quote slips into photo corners, and there's an envelope on the back of the frame with a bunch more quotes so my SIL can change them out from time to time. I love how it turned out! I started with a $1 frame from Michaels, then used Basic Grey paper -- LOVE this Ambrosia line -- Fancy Pants chipboard, and a Making Memories Pin. The butterfly is cut from some of the PP. I designed the quote on my computer.


>

My second project was something special for my mom and dad. This is to hang by a pretty tile portrait of my sister Carissa, who passed away last spring. I took an MDF plaque, spray painted the bottom layer with gold, then added crackle finish before applying the cream layer. I love the effect of the gold peeking through the cream. I cut the vinyl with my Cricut and Sure Cuts a Lot.

It's no secret that I love a challenge blog -- it seems like the only time I get projects done is if I have a deadline! And thanks to my new scrappin' friend Brooke Stockman (whose blog is very much worth checking out on its own), I've discovered two new blogs I'll definitely be participating in:

Mojo Monday -- a new card challenge every Monday, with prizes the first Monday of each month

Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge -- weekly challenges using great movies as inspiration. I think this one will really get my creative juices flowing!

Count Your Blessings!

Can I just say that I really love SCAL? And I really love being able to cut vinyl with my bug. This is my latest home decor project. I needed something tall to go on this shelf (but I think this plaque may be a little too tall, so I'm not sure if this will be its final home), and I thought this saying would be perfect to go by all our family pictures and just above where I keep all the scrapbooks. Because we are definitely blessed! I created this plaque using the Amazone ("count your") and Americana ("blessings") fonts, as well as a dingbat font called Beautiful Ornaments 3 for the flourishes. I left a space at the bottom because it was going behind other stuff, but if I hang it on a wall I'll put a current family photo in that space.

On the same note, here is my latest layout, created for Regina's Bitten By The Bug blog. This week's challenge was the "Lucky" shape from Alphalicious, I thought it would work perfectly with my pics from Mother's Day, because that's how my family makes me feel. :) I sized the cut and shadow in CDS. PP is from Cosmo Cricket, Dutch Girl line, and the little flower is a Martha Stewart punch. TFL!

I'm in love...

So a month or so ago I took the plunge and bought Sure Cuts a Lot, the software you can use with your Cricut that allows it to cut any TTF font (including dingbats!) on your computer, but I haven't gotten much of a chance to play with it until now. Well, I discovered that not only can it cut fonts, but it will also let you cut any SVG file. With the programs I have, that basically means I can cut anything I can draw -- yippee!

I've been doing some reorganizing and in my scraproom and needed to find a new home for my flower collection and the magnet board I did a while back. (I'm sure some of these flowers would like to find a new home on a project -- since I almost never use them -- but that's a post for another time.) I bought this shelf unfinished from the craft store, and I'd also just bought a big pack of Quickutz vinyl on a really great deal at Costco, so I decided to fancy it up. I drew these flourishes and the little birdie using my Bamboo pen tablet (love it!), then turned them into SVG files and cut them in vinyl with SCAL. Voila! I LOVE how this turned out! I used Cricut Design Studio to create the rows of dots for the ledge. I think I'm going to have a LOT of fun with these new toys.