Paint Chip Wall Art

After our relatives left, I really noticed how empty our place seemed.  Although we moved here almost a year ago, I haven't put much effort into making our place more personal.  Chuck's room is the only one that's sort of decorated.

So, I'm going to do my best to add some decorations to the walls.  I'm not too picky, but I do have three requirements for wall art:

1.  It must be bright and happy.
Chuck and I spend quite a bit of time at home.  We need to be surrounded by lovely, happy things.  

2.  It must be removable.
We live in an apartment.  We're not going to live here forever.  I really really don't want to re-paint rooms or fill holes when we leave.

3.  It must be relatively inexpensive.
I'm uber cheap.  One day we'd like to own our own house, so we're slowly saving up.  (Plus, we had a rather traumatic experience with movers breaking stuff, so I worry about expensive art being destroyed.)

Making wall art with paint chips fits all three requirements.  Inspired by A Beautiful Mess's modern paint chip wall art and How About Orange's triangle paint chip art, I thought I'd give paint chips a try.  Here's my result:

Three Mini projects

Hi everyone!  It's been a couple of days since my last post and I thought I'd just say a quick "hi" to let you know that we haven't dropped off the planet.  We've just been enjoying the good weather and spending lots of time playing outside (boo shoe tans) and stuffing our faces  eating Girl Scout cookies (yurmmy).

Here are three small projects that we recently worked on,.  They didn't seem big enough to get their own posts, so I figured I'd just group them together in one post:

1.  Last week I freezer paper stenciled a flying pig tote bag for a niece 

2.  Inspired by Dave Laferriere's sandwich bag art, I hid some inspirational (and humorous) notes in hubby's lunch box:

3.    What was that third project again?  Oh yeah, Hubby gave Chuck a mohawk.  Shnazzy.

Good-bye

Today our family of six returned back to a group of three.  Now the apartment feels a bit too large and quiet.
We miss everyone already.  Now who's going to sing "Dingle Dangle scarecrow" with Chuck?


P5124812 from Pink Stripey Socks on Vimeo.

Make a stained glass house using cellophane

A while ago, a cousin sent me a beautiful faux stained glass panel that her friend made using colored cellophane and a picture frame.  I've since lost the photo, but every so often I keep thinking back to that image and wanting to make my own faux stained glass using cellophane.

Here's a fun kids' craft that I came up with:  a 3D stained glass house constructed out of cellophane and plastic containers:

Materials:
- paper
- pencil
- scissors
- clean and dry plastic lids (sturdier plastic works better than flimsier plastic)
- Mod Podge
- foam brush
- different colored cellophane (you could probably substitute colored tissue paper too)
- clear tape

Directions:
1.  Cut out your six house pieces. (I cut them out of paper first to make sure everything fit and then traced my paper shapes onto plastic lids.)  You'll need two same-sized "house" shaped pieces for the front and back, two rectangles for the roof,  and two rectangles for the side of your house.  (I ended up making the two side and two roof pieces four identical squares so that I wouldn't have to worry too much about measuring.)

2.  Cut out random small pieces of cellophane.  I chose to cut out hearts and rectangles.

3.  Cover your work area.  Use your foam brush and Mod Podge the cellophane onto your house pieces.  Don't worry if the cellophane dangles off the edges.

 4. After the Mod Podge dries, trim any excess hanging cellophane pieces.  Your cellophane will dry crinkled, but that's ok.

 5.  Tape your pieces together to create a house.  (I first taped the pieces into the flat arrangement below.  Then, I bent and taped the pieces into their final 3D house shape.  I also made sure that the Mod Podged cellophane pieces were facing inside my stained glass house.  I figured this way the cellophane wouldn't rub off as easily.)

 Voila!  Done.  I think this would be a really fun craft to do with kids.  It's a different take on the traditional stained glass or sun catcher craft.    Let me know if you try it out!