DIY Art

A while back, I redid my entry area, which you can read all about here. This is the view from my computer in my office area.

But it was never quite done. For one thing, notice the skimpy little rug at the front door. Totally inadequate. I had another rug in mind, that happens to be be blue, which is why I temporarily used this rug. The other issue was that I felt that I had hung my quilt too high on the wall. My thinking at the time was that if the kids sat on the bench, then I didn't want them pulling on or disturbing the quilt. But it is too high. So, recently, I fixed these two issues! And, total cost of my makeover was $0!!!

First, I dealt with the skimpy rug! I had a Persian-type area rug in the garage that needed to be cleaned. I have had it for years. I used to be in our basement in our Colorado house... where the kids played. Then it spent quite a bit of time rolled up in the garage, in storage. Most recently, my husband had adopted it to put on the garage floor under his workout area! Needless to say, it has not received the best treatment from our family.

So, on a beautiful, sunny day, I put the rug out on the driveway and hosed it down! In the process I discovered that it was, indeed, a wool rug. (The wet-dog smell tipped me off!) I used my Floor-Mate floor cleaner to extract as much water from it as possible. I let it dry. I ended up draping it over the upstairs railing overnight to make sure it was completely dry. Then I placed it in the entry. My 12-year old son expressed concern about it possibly getting dirty in that spot. I pointed out that it has suffered worse treatment, and that I can always clean it again.

So now comes the art part! I still needed to deal with the too-high, hanging quilt. Well, rather than lowering the quilt, I decided that I would add something below them. So, I took some old oak frames that I had, and painted them! I received this quart of robin's egg blue for free in the mail, thanks to Jen's blog.

These are 11"x14" frames I have had forever and wasn't using. So I didn't feel bad about altering them.

Then I picked out some pretty scrapbook papers. Since paper is 12"x12", I had to trim off an inch to fit in the frame.... and then add another 2" to the bottom to make my background 14".

Just for interest, I added an old sticker border I had laying around to the seam where the two papers meet.

I found three Bible verses I really liked. I trimmed down another piece of scrapbook paper to fit in my printer. Then I printed up the verses! I was so excited to see this project completed, that I skipped one, crucial step. I should have printed my verses first on white paper to make sure I liked the size. But no, I immediately printed directly on the only piece of paper I had in this color I liked. I would have liked my verses to be larger, but this is what I got. I used a Tearing Tool to trim them down to size and give them some texture.

I then added some fun, large sticker letters to spell out "Grace", "Love", and "Peace". The verses I had chosen went along with these words.

It really took just a few minutes to assemble my "art"! I then popped each one into a freshly-painted frame, and hung them as a series on the wall under my quilt.

Now, this is the inspiring view I have of my entry from my computer! I love it! And I love that it cost nothing but a few minutes of time.

I am linking up to Kimba's DIY Day! See more fun projects there!