tag: dollar store



 

Our house: office gallery wall

So as I mentioned last week, life has been busy. Hectic. Unorganized. So not much has gotten done around the house but I am trying to keep doing things that don’t take a lot of time or supplies. One of those things has to finally hang photos and art.

In my office I have a wall across from my desk that I stare at all day long and I decided to create a gallery wall full of images & objects that mean something to me or just that I like to look at.

And it is done!

my office gallery wall

I love my wall. It is random and pretty and makes me smile all day long.

Starting from the top left here is what it consists of:

  1. ‘be’ canvas – dollar store canvas and some paint. I printed the word off on my printer and used carbon paper to trace it on the canvas and just painted around it letting the white canvas show through. I made to remind me to just be myself and not worry what anyone else thinks about me.
  2. paper tole flower art – this was my husband’s grandmother’s. She had it hung in her house and we received it as a gift to remember her by. His aunt made it and I reframed it in a Ikea Ribba frame to bring it up to date. I love it!
  3. grateful print – by vol25.
  4. lanscape print on canvas – $5 from a flea market
  5. clock – $4 from walmart
  6. peace print (grey print in the black frame) – free printable from simple as that. I love this print because I had chosen ‘peace’ as my word of the year and this describes what I mean by that perfectly.
  7. skeleton key – found at a local country general store
  8. wooden letterpress ‘j’ – a gift from a friend. So happy to have it on my wall!
  9. mini canvas – a canvas I created using my grandmother’s handkerchief.
  10. dream – metal sign I purchased at a home show years ago. Was originally aged white paint and rust coloured so I painted it to go in here.

  11. Wizard of Oz poster – I have had this since I was in my teens. It is a mounted posted that was hung in my bedroom. It got placed in my office temporarily while we were dealing with our rec room carpet and I loved it. So it stayed.
  12. Photo of a rainbow – caught this gorgeous photo of a low lying rainbow in the back fields near our house. Took the picture with my iPhone and loved it.
  13. small print in gold frame – $5 at a flea market
  14. letter j – this was a cardboard letter from the dollar store and I covered it with some free printable paper with modge podge.
  15. a picture of me and a dolphin – a picture from a vacation I took where I got to meet (& kiss) a dolphin.
  16. Julia Child print – from unraveled design.

Up next? Painting the cabinets, organizing my files & making a note board.

 

mini canvas

So since I have been working on a gallery wall in my office as well as adding some new art to the kids’ rooms, I have been keeping my eye out for things around the house to make interesting and meaningful art. And this mini canvas is a perfect example.

This was a souvenir handkerchief my grandmother had in her possessions that I was given after she passed away. It was from Florida and I just really like the design and colours but don’t have any real connection to Florida itself. I just wanted to use one section of the hankie to showcase – the flower.

First I searched my house for the perfect frame but couldn’t find what I was looking for (and believe me, I have a lot of frames hanging around – my plans are to get them all on the wall by end of February) but then I remembered a mini canvas I had and gathered some supplies:

my supplies

So I laid out the mini canvas and used hodge podge to attach the fabric the way it would show the flower and the pretty scalloped edge. I also removed the staples from the visible side and just hodge podged the canvas down on that edge to make it look cleaner.

And now I have this little piece of art in my office.

my new wall art

And I love it!

 

under cover

I am enjoying this new “game” of trying to finish stuff up in the house without spending money. I have learned my ability to think outside the box, to be inventive and resourceful and to not assume the best answer is the one I have to go out and buy.

For example, since I moved my office to the basement, I also took my under desk cable organizer from Ikea with me. This one:

ikea signum cable organizer


And while it is a great solution and I love it for the basement, I didn’t like the loss of being able to hide my cables in the kitchen. I still use my desk area for my laptop and a lamp and now Little Man’s DS charger so I still needed a solution.

So I went shopping in my house. And I found these:

my supplies


This is a dollar store basket, a couple of extra spacers from our television wall mount (for the smaller sizes) and some screws.

And this is what I came up with.

my homemade cable organizer


I attached a power bar to the underside of my desk and right next to it I attached the basket using the spacers to keep it slightly lowered from the desktop for easy access. I cut some of the holes in the sides of the basket to make bigger spaces to wind the cords through.

So for $0, I was able to come up with a solution I like and NEVER have to look at. Here is what my desk looks like now:

organized desk

 

live, laugh & love

One of my favourite quotes I read years ago was so simple in its meaning: “Live well, Laugh often, Love much”. Way back when I heard this quote I happened upon really great wood letters at the dollar store and picked up everything I need to write out this quote. And scavenged in my collection of old canvases to find one I had gotten WAY back in my Omer Deserres years (it had been painted on, used for display, was ripped and being thrown out so Leslie gave it to me – thanks Leslie!). When I purchased all these pieces, I fixed the canvas, added more texture to it, glued on the letters and painted it brown-ish.

And didn’t like it. So I then painted it green.
Which I kept for a while and then got sick of.

Finally, in my new house, where I want interest without too much contrast and things simple and pretty. I got it right. I painted it soft white. It is exactly what I want, interesting without being glaring. Here it is:

live, laugh & love

live, laugh & love

I especially love how it balances out the closet on the opposite wall of the hallway now, how they both bounce light back and just how easily it fills up that wall.

i love my bright hallway

i love my bright hallway

Next up: the stairwell.

 

our house: girl’s bedroom

I am VERY excited to post that I am finally done our daughter’s room. D-O-N-E.

Even though a lot of this I have changed/made myself, this will not be a place to share a “how to” with anyway. If I showed you how to paint furniture, you would have little hard paint drips in more than one place, like me, from not sanding enough or painting too thick. If I showed you how to quilt a pillow, you would be tracing your fabric squares out in PEN and not really caring if your corners match up.

But if there is one thing I would like you take away from this, is that no one ever looks close enough to see these imperfections, so let’s not focus on them, shall we? (This is a good lesson for other aspects of life as well)

Without further ado, here is her room:

girl's bedroom 1

Her bed, painted nightstand and bookcase

girl's bedroom 2

Her bureau, kitchen and table

This was an old fake wood bookcase I painted green. I followed Censational Girl’s directions for painting laminate. I also wanted to put numbers on the tags for her bins, but she demanded letters, and not just any letters but P, Q, R, & S. I figured, why not? [owl is from a great etsy store: Manic Muffin Totes]

girl's bedroom 3

Her bookcase

I just finished this today and LOVE it, but don’t look too close at my corners. ;)

girl's bedroom 4

Her quilted pillow

I love this nightstand. It was black from Loblaws and looks awesome green. I also like that I hung her night light super low so she can turn it on and off herself from bed. [artwork by Holli Conger]

girl's bedroom 6

Her nightstand and night light

This is her princess mirror. Again, it was black (from an Ikea bureau) and I painted it slightly greener than her walls. And added some rhinestone stickers from the dollar store.

girl's bedroom 5

Her princess mirror

This is her play kitchen. I made it out of an old nightstand of my parent’s and love it, although I would do a bunch of things differently if I did it again.

girl's bedroom 8

Her play kitchen

And lastly, this is her table and chairs where she serves all her meals. I painted two discount canvases with a window design to give her dining room a view (of the beach since I miss the East Coast).

girl's bedroom 7

Her table and chairs with a view

So there you have it. Now that I am done her room, off to finish my son’s.

 

collaborative art

As all parents can attest out there, my kids inspire me. But I never expected my son to inspire my artwork. And that is exactly what he did.

When trying to figure out some artwork to put up in his room, I knew that I wanted something colourful and fun. I started thinking of things I could paint when I was inspired by the blog The Painted House where you can see in her school room tour a painting she did based on her son’s drawing. I loved it and thought what a great thing that we could create.

So I put aside all drawings that have been created in the last few weeks. Which isn’t hard since we probably average about 5 a day these days (can I say I love having a little man artist in the house?). And then I picked the one I loved the most and photocopied it in the right size and transferred it to a dollar store canvas:

the city painting: before

the city painting: before

And after a night of painting in his lines, I came up with this:

the city painting: after

the city painting: after

Can’t wait to do another one and then finish up his room with these.
Total cost: $5 [$3 for carbon paper & $2 for canvas]