2012 and New Beginnings!

We are on the verge of another exciting year!
And with that brings new opportunities and changes. 

Isn't that wonderful!

This is my last post on Curly Willow DIY.
I'm not sad, but excited to start a new adventure of my own. Barb will continue to post here about her home decorating, crafts and travel. She is the reason I started this blog. She has amazing taste and creates beauty all around her and I wanted her to share. And, I know that is what you've enjoyed about this blog. Now that she is up and running and has GREAT followers, she is good to go and be independent.
(I will be still helping her behind the scenes.)

I did start my own blog, www.vickidesigner.com.

I will sharing about art, fonts, crafts and things that inspire me. This will not be a home and garden blog. I will still be offering freebies and great paper printables to keep you inspired and organized. So, if you enjoyed what I've shared in the past, I'd love for you to join me at www.vickidesigner.com.

Here's a screen shot on what you will find.

So, I hope you stop by my blog and check it out.
You can subscribe via e-mail or RSS (in your favorite reader.)

I wish you abundant blessings and prosperity in 2012!

God Bless!

Vicki

Framed my Own Canvas Print, Instant Wow!

The beginning of September I won a giveaway from Catherine at the Design Editor and UPrinting.com.

I designed my own KEEP CALM Poster. It's been such a busy September,
I never had time to frame it until today. I bought an easy frame kit at Hobby Lobby for $6.00.
It was so easy to put together with a little light hammering.

 You can see in the photo I simply stapled my frame together with a heavy duty staple gun. 

An easy way to line up your art, since you can't see it when you frame, is to fold over where your art begins. That way you can simply line up your frame, check it, and staple in place.

Folding the corners over is as easy as wrapping a present.
So, whatever look you want works as long as it's a nice tight corner.

After you have all your sides stapled, turning over the frame from time to time
just to double check yourself...

Use a hammer to lightly tap the staples in a little tighter.

This is an easy project, you'll only need the staple gun, hammer and a flat head screwdriver
to dig out any staple that might be a bit wrong.

All done! Easy-peasy!

Hang on the wall and instant WOW!

Love that this adds some inspiration for my office!

Did you see it? I know! Right! I have one... my hubby got it for me for my birthday. That adorable, awesome, cute-as-can-be bag hanging there is the Jeanne Oliver Ellison Camera Bag!

Oh, you want a closer look... I don't blame ya!

L-O-V-E

So, if you have a fav image you'd love to see on canvas...

you can try to win a giveaway... OR have the image printed on canvas.

I checked it out, my image is a 16x20, which only costs $25.56 at UPrinting.com

Then just buy a easy frame at Hobby Lobby for $6.00.

That's a pretty inexpensive way to get an amazing personalized look for your home!

Have a great weekend!

Vicki

Linking up to

Paper and Tape

Hey everyone! Is it really spring?? Sure doesn't feel like around these parts. We're supposed to get snow tomorrow. Noooo! Argh!!!! Not a lot-just enough to remind us that Mother Nature is in charge. I guess she doesn't care what the calendar says and just wants to unfold spring to us when she's darn good and ready. So...we wait...

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I showed you an "art" piece I made with an antique hanger and a calendar page. Remember? It was the Simple Addition post. Well, I got three more antique hangers and attached different antique pages to them.

These pages are really cool. They're sea life illustrations done by a well known German scientist in the late 1800's. My brother got the pages on ebay from some guy in Europe and they were supposed to be my Christmas gift. Now, three months later, I finally have them. Of course, I can't just buy picture frames and hang them. No. Since I had the four hangers I thought I definitely had to attach the pages to the hangers and display them all together. My breakfast nook walls were bare and that's where they needed to go.

I had a problem, though. Only one hanger had clothes pins to attach the paper. I had to figure out how to attach the other delicate pages to the other hangers. It turns out archival tape and some twine was all I needed.

I just looped the twine around the hanger rod and taped it to the back of the paper.
I used archival tape so it won't damage the old paper.

Ta da!! What do you think? Clever, huh?

The white shelf came out of my mother's garage, from an old a house she bought more than 20years ago. When she bought that house, the shelf stored small cans of old paint. The cans were probably on that shelf for at least 20 years prior. That shelf was way too beautiful to be in a garage holding rusty old cans. I brought it home, cleaned it up and have been loving it since.

I'll be linking up to some great parties. Hope to see you party people there.

Have a great week. See ya.

Linky Parties!

Piece of Work Wednesday at

Simple Addition

This antique flea market hanger

Plus this gently torn calendar page

Equal this simple addition to the dining room wall.

Easy as 1,2,3.

Have a great week!

Playing at these linky parties!

 

Calendar Art

Oh, man! There's just too much white. I've been surrounded by it for far too long. All the white walls inside and now all the snow outside, it's just too much. I needed to do something. Fast.

These calendar pages have been nailed to my walls for months. They are months February and July for the Birds 20111 Cavallini and Co. calendar.

I bought this calendar almost a year ago with the intention of using the pages in some capacity as art in our townhouse rental. The walls in the unit are pure white and one wall soars 20 feet high. The blinding expanse of white makes me feel like I'm in an asylum. I had been waiting for some inspiration but I needed to get something on the walls now, before I go insane.

We don't plan on being in this rental for more than a couple of years, so I don't want to invest much time or money into making this feel like home. Of course, I want to be comfortable here and enjoy living here, but I need to be resourceful and just use what I already have or at least keep new purchases to a minimum. On the rare occasion that I do purchase something for this place, I've decided that it will also have to be something that I will eventually be able to incorporate into the Florida home decor. So, you know what that means... I need to get creative!

On the biggest wall I kept the look pretty traditional. Simple black frames with mats were on clearance at Sears for only $15 each. Not too bad. That was an easy and budget friendly solution.

Framing book and calendar pages is a quick and affordable way to add images to your walls. It's so easy to personalize your spaces and it's pretty unlikely that your friends and neighbors will have the same pictures hanging in their homes.

On the other side of the room and over the white pie hutch I wanted to do something different, a little more contemporary. I'm not an artist, by any means, but sometimes I like to play around and "see what happens". A friend had given me a couple of canvases and I had some left over paints and, of course, Mod Podge. I used two more pages from the calendar and then cut out the nests and eggs from another couple of pages and added them. I extended the branches and added a couple of leaves. To give it a bit of an aged look, I did a little light sanding over the whole piece and then sealed each with a couple coats of Mod Podge. So, this is "what happened".

While I was snowed in I was inspired to to something with these white walls. Finally. I made six new pieces and had fun doing it. The calendar cost $21.95, the canvases were free and the paints I already had. My kind of budget decorating...

The sun is out! Hope you're enjoying your day!