Home » Art on the Cheap

Category Archives: Art on the Cheap

A Mini Makeover Part 2

Posted on by | 5 Comments

Once we got the new media console put together and set up, I realized-again- that the beige walls with the brown sofa, beige chair, brown side table, brown dog crate, brown piano and the brand-new brown media center was making me crazy. So I decided to paint- again.

I went to Lowe’s and they have some pre-mixed samples in bottles that you can see through so I just picked two that I liked.

One in blue. Is that too predictable?

And one in green.

I’ve been thinking lately that I should just have other people pick colors for me. Mostly because I choose the same type colors over and over and never actually find a winner. I would have never thought to choose this green if I’d only seen it on the paint chip.

It’s the lighter color on the far left. I don’t like the other two greens so I wouldn’t have even picked it up. I think it looks fabulous on the wall though. I never even tried the blue color since the kitchen and master bedroom are blue, plus I’ve been dying to get some more green in here. Although, now that I look at it the color seems a bit blue-green. But I like it a lot…

Next my hunt for accessories and whatnot began…

A couple of days later I stopped in at a local antique junk store that I’ve wanted to visit but never have. Here’s the thing about junk/antique shops in Franklin. We’re a bit of a destination for such things and people selling junk in Franklin typically know what out of towners are willing to pay for the junk and so IMHO, it’s all overpriced.

The nice pipe-guy assured me there was a “big sale” though.

I found a great cabinet…

image

Or two…

image

And this seemed like a real junk store since there was at least one place that I literally couldn’t walk through. I couldn’t even carefully step over the junk to get to some interesting milk glass cups. I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

I thought these were interesting and might look good on the new accent wall and they were reasonably priced- maybe $30-$35- but I wasn’t sure about them.

 

image

The most interesting thing I saw was a goat cart for $495. I’m not sure what I’d use a goat cart for but I do like it. Mostly it makes me giggle.

image

Unfortunately I got a call from, Amanda saying that the smoke detector kept going off so I had to head home quickly to make sure the house wasn’t going to burn down. It wasn’t. We just had a really old smoke detector. Did you know you’re supposed to replace those things every 10 years?

So my hunt for art and whatnot is still on.

About these ads

It’s the Little Things

Posted on by | 2 Comments

A few months ago I went shopping a bit south of Franklin and as I was driving back I saw a huge roll of hay with a “for sale” sign tacked onto it. I immediately got excited at the thought of finding a place that sells giant rolls of hay. My next thought was, “What in the world would I do with a giant roll of hay?”  Followed by, “Why don’t I get this excited about shoe shopping?” I find that as time goes on, it’s the little things that make me happy.

Like finding a glass, cobalt blue bottle of water. I’d seen these on a TV show (Frasier maybe?) but I never knew where to find one- apparently I’m not privy to suppliers of upscale water. But on the same shopping trip that I found this picture frame, I also found these pretty cobalt blue bottles of carbonated water. I’ve been using them since then to put hydrangeas in.

These haven’t turned blue yet but I like the green-white blossoms.

image

They’re equally pretty with blue flowers or pink roses- I’ve tried them all. It’s a nice alternative to my regular clear vases and it cost less than $2. How about you? Do you have a favorite alternative type vase? I’d love to hear about it.

Art on the Cheap

Posted on by | 4 Comments

Yes, I’ve been absent for a while. If you’ve followed any of my blogs for any reasonable amount of time you know I occasionally need time “away”. I need time to focus on something other than blog posts and projects so I can pray and regroup and course correct if I need to. This last month, although I still posted some, I let go of distraction and was really able to press in and focus on things that are necessary. I’d love to say that my house is cleaner but it isn’t really. My head, heart and spirit are very clear though.

I’ve struggled a bit to  find my voice since buying my own domain name and I’ve wondered what this blog should look like. And after much consideration, I think that this blog will look a whole lot like The Mrs. Adventures of Button Girl did or will look the way that I wanted my ButtonGirl blog to look. I always wanted to get to projects and recipes and creative things but I felt like I was in one of those giant, cartoon snowballs, rolling, rolling, rolling, out of control. Some things in our life have changed though and it’s given me the ability to focus on things that are fun and creative and for that I am very thankful.

I’ll talk about changes later because today I’ve got a new, fun, cheap art project to show you!

I saw a print on Pinterest a few months ago and I immediately knew I had to have it. It was during an especially dark time for me personally and the words, “I loved you at your darkest, Romans 5:8″ jumped out at me. That it’s printed on a page from a vintage book made it even more fabulous. You can find the Etsy seller here. Now, to be clear, “I loved you at your darkest”, isn’t a quote of Romans 5:8, it is actually, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ” However, I felt that it captured the sentiment of Romans 5:8 very well.

I received the package and the print was in a plastic sleeve so I still had to find a frame that would fit a page that was 6.5″ wide and 9.75″ high. It’s a wonky size for a frame. I thought about cutting it to fit  but didn’t really want to. So, I took a trip to TJ Maxx and found an espresso colored frame on clearance for $4. I intended to paint it but after I looked it over more carefully I realized that it was a really nice frame with nary a ding and thought it would be a shame to paint it. It’s an 8×10 so it fit the length of the print perfectly but it needed a mat of some sort. Ever the cheap-o I decided to look through some scrap book paper to see if I had anything that would work and wouldn’t you know it, I did!

I took this picture using Pixlr-o-matic, (thanks, Christy)! It seems to capture the colors the best. The ones I took with my other camera make the colors look too bright.

image

I’ll give you a close-up.

My moniter is making it look too bright and washed out all at the same time- the orange is actually very muted in real life. I think you get the idea though. Using orange is a big departure for me but I love the warmth it brings to the living room.

Here’s the cost breakdown:

Art print- $9 with shipping (although the price has been recently upped to $9 for the print + $2 shipping)

Frame- $4

Scrap booking paper- $1 (or possibly less)

For a grand total of $14.

So what say you? Do you have any fabulous, unique art? Do share!