DIY Wall Art

This is a picture from a Young House Love blog that was posted yesterday.  You can find it here.  By the way I am officially OBSESSED  with this blog.  It is amazing!  It is my go to blog for everything DIY.  They literally have tons of tutorials for doing pretty much any project you want to try.  I refer to it all the time.  If you have not seen this blog, you have to click on the link right now!  But please come back and see my little project after you fall in love with Young House Love!  I have seen this idea used a few times lately, and I love it!  I wanted to try doing my own version of it.  I have had a frame lying around for a while now that I bought at Goodwill for less than $1.  I bought some really cute scrapbooking paper and some scrapbooking letters/numbers, and I thought I would try making some meaningful date art of my own.

I chose this orange Ikat patterned scrapbook paper as my background.  I took the frame apart, and I traced onto the paper with the glass from the frame, and cut it so that it was the same size as the glass.  Next I layed the empty frame down over the paper I had cut.  I then traced the frame onto the paper lightly in pencil.  That way I would be able to center the numbers in the frame.  Then I chose the numbers I wanted to use.  I decided to use the birth dates of each of my three children.  The numbers I have come in a variety of colors and sizes, and I chose to make my numbers have differing sizes and to have an ombre effect, using two shades of grey, and black.  I punched the letters out in varying sizes, and began laying them out on the paper, changing things out until I liked the way it looked.

After I was satisfied with the way everything looked on the paper, I got out my glue stick and removed one letter at a time and glued it onto the paper.  All I had left to do after that was put everything together into the frame.  Here is the finished product.

I knew before I made this that I was going to hang it on my hallway gallery wall, so I had that in mind the whole time.  Here is where I hung it.

So sweet!  I hung it on the wall where I have all of the children’s pictures.  Fitting!  I did one more super quick piece of framed wall art for this wall.  Literally it took one minute.  I bought a card at Kroger a couple of weeks ago, and threw it into a frame and hung it on the same wall.

I liked the picture on the card, and I loved the colors too.  I thought it would look sweet on this wall right above the pictures of my children.  It says “You’re in my heart”.  Perfect sentiment, because that is exactly where all three of my babies are!  And wouldn’t you know I propped it up on top of the picture of Delaney, and it fell down and the glass broke.  Oh well, I just took the glass out and hung it back up for now.  I will change out the frame later.  Thsi gallery wall is probably going to be a work in progress for a long time.  That is what I love about it!  I am searching for the perfect letter M to add to it for Delaney and Coleton’s last name.

From left to right, that is Coleton, Delaney, and Gavin.  Below that is a picture of myself with both boys on the beach.  I love that picture!

And here is the part of the story that I am sure you will laugh about.  I am mortified!  I am not going to be winning any mother of the year prizes any time soon.  My husband came home for dinner after I had the project all finished and hung on the wall.  I asked him to come and look at it and tell me what he thought.  He took one look at it and said, “that’s nice, but that is not Gavin’s birthday”!  WHAT??  Yes, that is right people, I actually glued the wrong birthdate onto the paper, framed it, hung it, and stood back to admire it, and NOT ONCE did I notice that I had the wrong birth year!  He was actually born in 2007.  What was I thinking??  My husbnad and I were married in June of 2006, and Gavin was born in December of 2007.  That is really bad isn’t it?  Cut me some slack, K?  I had a long day!

I have one more thing to show you that you have pretty much already seen.  It is a photograph I purchased in NYC in August.  I finally framed it.  It is a cheap poster frame that I bought at Walmart.  It doesn’t even have glass in it, it has plexiglass.  But I don’t think it looks cheap at all.  When I showed it to Jason, he had no idea until I told him.  And here is where I hung it.  For now… to the left of my desk in the dining room/office.   I am thinking I might need to change the mat to a lighter color, but that is an easy fix.  Waht do you think?  A lighter mat, or stay with the black one?

And there you have it!  Both projects were pretty simple, easy peasy.  And I really like the way my gallery wall is coming together.  I hope you are feeling inspired about trying some DIY wall art yourself!