Logan's Room: Vintage Camp

If your children are anything like mine, they are 'into' everything. Dinosaurs, cars, Thomas, and a whole host of other toys and characters. So picking a theme isn't always easy. You want it to be fun and functional, with plenty of storage, a place they can call their own without going overboard. If I had to call this current look anything, maybe a loose camp feel?

I've been working in Logan's room trying to get things more organized and editing clothes and toys before school starts next month!! Wow! Where did the summer go???

Logan's room has always been vintage based and when he was super young I had picked out 'Lil' Cowpoke' fabric as an accent. Now that he is older, a little more mature look is in order.
This is a dresser my in laws gave me. I was thinking of painting it, I even feel a little silly showing you, but I didn't do anything to it except polish it! Once it got in here, the light pickled look was great and even seemed to be the same shade as the burlap pennant garland...so it made no changes whatsoever. Shocker.

Two vintage lamps that I picked up (new shades from Lowe's), they add a lot of light and height. I did a collage over the dresser consisting of things I've collected over time, all vintage except for the black frames. I put some of Logan's blocks in the old print block tray, old license plate, a watercolor from the flea market, matted and framed. I made his name banner a while back, it use to hang over the window, but I decided to try it over the collage for some layering. Not traditional kid's art, but I love the mix and there is growing room...I'm sure I'll pick up other things along the way.

We moved Logan into a twin bed (from a race car bed), especially after I found a twin head board and foot board. Literal curbside find. I couldn't believe it. The wood was pretty dried out and washed out and I decided to freshen it up with paint. I kept the linens pretty neutral, i.e. no character bedding. Mostly navy and orange. Vintage camp blanket (you've seen that blanket used in tablescapes :) Navy comforter from Walmart, ticking pillow I made a long time ago, striped pillowcase and euro sham from West Elm.

Here is the before of the spindle bed:

And after three cans of black spray paint:

  I ordered this rug from Overstock and I absolutely love it.

It is described on the website as being southwest, but I think it looks like camp/vintage. I really love how it picks up all the colors in the map wall

I found this orange metal chandy at a flea market in Bella Vista, Arkansas a couple of years ago. It's got to be from the 70's....Justin put it up for me a while ago. It looks pretty campy doesn't it? :)

The only thing I'm waiting on is this fabric from fabric.com, as soon as it comes in, I'll be making curtain panels. I would  also like to find a small round side table to use as a nightstand, something wooden.

Other than that, I think we are pretty close to to done!

Joining Emily A. Clark

Clothespin Art

Even after re-doing everything in the laundry room, I still ended up with a blank wall. With all the budget used up, I decided to make something with things I had around the house.
You'll need two 12x12 canvases, clothes pins, and get your hot glue gun fired up too.

I also had the old fashion type of clothespin and craftpins too. Justin's grandma was editing some of her craft supplies and naturally they came to me, so I had these in my stash (she use to make those little angels with the crochet dresses with these).

I thought I'd do a circle and a square, although I think that the circle ended up looking like a sunflower. I left the canvas (it came pre-primed) and the clothespins natural. Alternating the craft pins, clothespins and adding in some new ones too, just run a line of glue on the back and eyeball it.
I did find center, and used one of the 'stands' that the craftpins come with for the center

I had some lattice pieces out in the garage left over from the the Chain Link Dresser, so I added a couple of strips to the sides, not all four though (I didn't have quite enough ;).


The square one is made with all new clothespins and I just alternated the pattern.


Modern art with a household item!

It can't get any easier than this!

I hope you are inspired to create some mod clothespin art too!

Have a great weekend! Joining Jen

Need a design boost? For advice and guidance on style, contact me!

Changing Artwork To Suit Your Needs

I like to show you different ways of creating and displaying artwork because if you're like me, you just can't go out and buy high dollar art on a whim. A lot of what I do is based around a 'use what you have' mentality and this project is a prime example.

This project was on my left-to-do-list for the master bedroom...one down a few more to go. You remember the inspiration fabric right? I used the fabric to pull paint colors.

I had to do a little of mixing. To get the right color, I started with Canyon Orange and just kept adding red until it was close to Tiger Lily (the color of the coverlet).

So here is the piece. My MIL bought it for me years ago, back when I did a blue and brown palette. It's made from some sort of suede like fabric. It's a great piece and I didn't want to lose it just because I wasn't using blue anymore. It hangs right above one of the dressers and I have a round thingie (you'll see below) that looks great right in front of it.

BEFORE:

AFTER:


I painted out the blue and added a little grey, the rest of the colors were perfect.

So does this give you any ideas? Do you have any pieces of art you can change?

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you're inspired!

Did you miss the progress on the Master Bedroom? Click HERE

Look What I Found!

I couldn't wait to show you what I found this past weekend! An unframed original piece of artwork of my favorite subject, the ocean. I have been enamored with vintage paintings for quite some time. I have NEVER EVER found any until this weekend!

I also found a smallish watercolor and grabbed it up too. I think it is so fantastic!
They are both signed, by some unknown artist. I just love how both the paintings feel, some story that I'll never know, some cast offs from a painters sketchbook. I love to think there is some mysterious and sentimental story attached to each one. I wonder what it is! :)

I can't wait to find a frame to put my new artwork in. I'm quite sure I will find something in my stash of thrift store frames to fit it.
I will probably have to go get some matting cut for the watercolor.

Do you like to collect old paintings?
Did you go thrifting or Antiquing this weekend? What did you find?

DIY Printer's Block Art

(Have you met my favorite vintage owl plate? :)

While this concept is nothing new, I love the idea of creating printer block art for yourself using the letters that you've collected over time, it has so much more meaning I think. I finally got enough letters in my collection to create my own piece of art. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

What you'll need for this project:

Deep frame or shadow box frame

Matting without any openings

Vintage printer block letters

Glue gun

Depending on how large your block letter collection is will determine what size frame you'll need. I used 19 letters and my frame is 20 inches square. I would like to do some smaller ones too, after I do some more collecting.

I went to Hobby Lobby's framing department and had them cut some matting for me without any openings. They do charge for the cuts but luckily the matting itself was on sale, so it wasn't too bad. I used matting because it's nice and firm, anything else would be too flimsy. I think another neat idea would be to use fabric or burlap on the matting if you are not into the modern look. Next, begin working on the composition of the letters, this is not an exact science, just use your eye to get the composition right. I have a combination of big and small wooden blocks and a couple of metal ones, so yours will depend on what you've got. I did some upside down and sideways to keep it interesting. I recommend occasionally laying the frame down on what you've done to make sure it's looking right within the frame. I have had this frame for years and it just so happened to be deep enough to accommodate the letters, but shadow box frames will work too. Once the composition is perfect, begin to glue each letter down on the matting, carefully picking them up and quickly laying them back down making sure nothing shifts. Carefully put the frame back together and it is ready to hang! It ended up being kinda heavy! I hung my new/old piece of art among thrifted plates and photographs....using the vintage letters and the modern frame is like music to me! Here's a bonus project; I found a scalloped plate while thrifting, sprayed it flat black and glued a craft mirror in the center, I love it and super simple! I love how it turned out and is quite the focal point. I am still working on a post specifically focused on creating a gallery wall, so be sure to look for that soon. Thank you for stopping by, I hope you're inspired to create some art!