I've realized that a lot of the little craft projects I post about come with a mention of how cheap they are. It's not that I'm opposed to spending money on home things (as Matt could easily tell you) but since in the next 18ish months we plan to spend money on buying a second vehicle, remodeling our bathroom, and starting the adoption process again (which we will only do when we have the money set aside for the placement fees)...home decorating probably won't happen unless it's fairly inexpensive. I have had more of an interest lately in decorating and making our home look nice, happy, and ours. This means lots of little projects for me to do what I can for little money.
I'm starting a new series on home decorating projects that can be done for little money, say under $20, usually under $10. I'm a big fan of buying things at Target or the dollar store and adding some paint or somehow making it ours. I also don't like to have things just like everyone else so putting in a little work makes me happy and like it more.
My first little project is one I did for the kitchen, replacing our skydiving certificates and pictures that had hung for 4+ years. I had seen this on Pinterest many times as well as many different versions of this same idea. When I decided to replace our certificates this is the first things that came to mind.
Silhouette Art
What you will need:
-some scrapbook or colored paper
-skill to freehand draw an animal or clip art from the internet
-a frame
-scissors
-tape
We have a lot of turtles around, especially in Luke's room. I thought about using a turtle and a flamingo but wanted to stick with the blue/green color theme we have going in the kitchen (and the whole house) and a blue/green flamingo seemed a little off to me. I couldn't get myself to do it. I settled on two different turtle shapes. I found these in a few minutes with some quick Googling. I messed a little with the sizing before printing them on scrap printer paper.
I have a stash of scrapbook paper (from years of scrapbooking) and went through it picking out multiple pieces in green, blue, or a mix. These are the two Matt & I agreed on, both of which I've had for years.
I played around with my turtle shapes on the paper, figuring out where I liked them best before flipping the paper over to trace the backside (to eliminate pencil marks on the front). Then it was just some quick cutting.
Since my turtles were mostly green I pulled a lot of blue paper to try out for backgrounds. I ended up using what I call (in my head) "Colts Blue". I cut these down to just a little larger that my mat opening and taped my turtles. I could have glued them but I'm kinda stingy when it comes to my scrapbook paper and wanted the option to reuse them in the future. I know. I should just spring for another $0.25 piece of paper.
I taped my background paper to the mat, put in a frame and done! Well I had to move some nails (and still need to fill and paint over the old holes) but the art part was done! Total time...including finding pictures online, messing with the printing size, going through my paper, tracing, cutting, taping, hanging...maybe 30 minutes total for 2 pieces.
Total price: around $4 for one frame since I already had one, the mats (from other frames), and the scrapbook paper. 12x12 scrapbook paper retails for about $0.69 at Jo-Anns but I only buy it when it's on sale for 5/$1 or 6/$1 (depending how badly I need some). So if you had to buy everything besides the tape and scissors it would still be under $5 a piece. Not bad at all.
I really like how these turned out and how the color works in the kitchen. Our skydive (how many times I can I mention those??) certificates just kinda blended into the wall but these stand out more, which is nice. Plus the black frames match the NYC puzzle hanging above. So, even if I completely hate them in a year it's was worth the 30 minutes and a frame I can reuse elsewhere.
And since I keep mentioning it...
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