Painting Our Home Office

We finally painted our office! I have been so ready to get it done. I am sick of being disorganized, living out of boxes and staring at mountains of totes. I hate starting another room in our house since my bedroom and living room are not complete. Eventually once I get all the furniture I need and final details finished, all the rooms with be photographed nicely and appear on the blog again. I am looking for a dresser for my bedroom, I need to do a painting for my living room, find a coffee table, finish painting the fireplace, pillows for my couch and a few DIY projects for the bedroom. When will this all happen? Who knows!!! ;) On to a before picture of my office...


We had to paint all the trim, the ceiling and remove the horrible wallpaper border. When we first bought the house this room had carpet. I ripped it up one day to reveal the wood floors, see that post HERE. We used a spray bottle full of water and vinegar to remove the wallpaper. I don't think the border was glued down that well because it came off very easily.


I picked a shade of mint green for the walls. The paint is Behr, card #440A, MINT FRAPPE
In every photo below it looks different...

I am in love with the color. It was exactly what I wanted. In person it is more green then blue. It's very true to the color on the swatch card. Cody loves it as well. :) I always like it when Cody likes the decorating I do. The last thing I want is for him to hate a room he has to live in. The office is for both of us because he is doing online college classes now. I plan to decorate the room with many of my vintage toys. I am struggling with how to display them and make the room NOT look cluttered. This room is going to take me awhile to pull together. Once I get some decorating done I will share some photos. Also we plan to make one huge desk area using extra doors in our house that we don't need. I am trying to be GREEN by re-purposing them.

DIY Painting // A Lorax Quote

I knew I wanted to do a painting for our bedroom. I wasn't sure what I was going to paint until we watched the movie The Lorax. I wanted a positive message on my wall to read everyday. The Lorax had a great message and I knew right away what quote I wanted to paint. I designed it on Photoshop and then printed it out...


I decided to cut each word or sentence out so that I could choose the placement myself. I have a projector that I bought years ago at Hobby Lobby. It has come in handy for many projects. It's great for tracing images onto walls or canvases. All you need is a dark room and you are set to go...


I didn't know how all the wording was going to fit on the canvas, so I just freely moved around each word/sentence till I liked the way it looked. I loved the word UNLESS very large at the top. Of course, it would be better to measure this all out before hand,..but I never do things that way. HA! Then I started tracing...


As you can see even tracing is never perfect. Fast forward and can see the finished traced design...
Since I didn't measure the design out there is a blank spot at the bottom of the canvas.
I didn't think it looked bad so I left it that way. Plus I was just happy it all fit!!
Since my bedroom is painted pink I decided to decorate the room with touches of gold and silver. I have never like gold in the past but it's really grown on me. Someday I will get the room done and you will get to see it. I love the gold paint! It's so pretty. Here you can see the painting after one coat of paint...


Here it is finished...

I still have some pencil marks to erase. My O's got a little crazy. ;) It was hard to keep it perfect. I am happy with it though. I prefer just hanging my own paintings in my home or photographs I have taken.

What do you think? Do you make your own art for your home?
TOUR MY HOME HERE

HELLO YELLOW LIVING ROOM!

One room down. Many more to go. Painting is what I'm talking about of course. I think it's pretty awesome that at the end of the first week of living in our house I already had a room painted. I haven't unpacked much though. The kitchen and daily needed items are done, but not much more. My computer is on an end table in the living room and I blog sitting on the floor. Gotta keep the posts coming! :) First I am going to share a few BEFORE photos of our living room....


The room is dark with the curtains pulled and I hated the paneling! It was quite a process for me to decide on a wall color for the living room. Lighting is everything! A color that looks good at the home improvement store doesn't mean it will look good when you get it home. It took 2 guys at Home Depot to get my paint color matched correctly and 2 wasted "oops" cans of paint. I felt bad for them really.


I knew before we even moved into our house that I wanted a shade of mustard yellow! I did test the swatch out in the living room lighting before purchasing it. I had about 10 different shades of yellow to choose from. The color I finally decided on was Golden Glow by Olympic. Before I started painting the room yellow I had to first paint the baseboards and trim in the room. The previous homeowners thought it was a wonderful idea to paint the base boards the same yucky shade of brown as the walls. I used white trim paint by Glidden to paint the trim...


I decided to paint the trim on Friday night that way I could start the yellow Saturday morning. I couldn't wait to get started! It took two coats of paint to cover up the brown. I love Glidden paint because it drys fast making it easy to get the job done. Then the morning came and my least favorite part of painting needed to be done, cutting in the entire room...


What a difference already! Huge difference in the brown and yellow. Then it was time for the super fun part, rolling the walls! I love watching the room change and transform into something beautiful.


It was such a great feeling to pour the paint in the tray. The last room I painted was back in 2010 and it was a small white bathroom. BORING. To see the bold bright color in front of me was pure happiness & joy! Painting is so therapic for me. :)


This color is amazing really. Even after all the attempts by the Home Depot coworkers to get it correct it still wasn't. Once the paint started drying I realized the color was "off" and much brighter then I wanted. The color changes throughout the day depending on the light. It goes from mustard yellow, a mac n cheese color, orange and sometimes it reminds me of the color of a school bus. I like bright colors, so it's working for me. :)


As if painting wasn't enough to be dealing with on Saturday our sewer decided it was going to back up. Luckily we were able to get a plumber to our house right away for emergency service. Sadly our carpet is pretty nasty in the basement now and my mattress for my guest bedroom got wet. GROSS. I guess we will be replacing some carpet sooner then we expected. At least none of the hardwood floors got damaged. In the end that's all I care about really. Sunday came and it was time to tackle the wood paneling. I hate wood paneling! I decided to paint the entire wall white, fireplace and all...


(Yes that is a big Smurf sitting on my couch.)

Currently the fireplace is only primed. I need a break from painting for a few days to get caught up on other things. We really could of used a paint sprayer to paint it. It took forever and it's still not perfect. I am happy with all the white. It really pops with the yellow walls! The room is so much lighter and inviting now.


It truly is amazing what you can do with paint. Now I get to stage all my stuff in the room and add all the fun details. I didn't have a plan for this room really. I just knew we needed to keep our vintage couch and I wanted yellow walls. I hope to get some curtains this weekend at IKEA. I do like a pair at World Cost Market but they are kinda pricey. We'll see what happens. I look forward to going through all my stuff and decorating. I plan to paint some paintings for the room also. I could probably spend a few months in this room alone if I wanted to. I leave you with a photo I took while typing this post. The living room has turned into a kitty lounge....


More photos as I get things done :)

DIY: Crayon Art & Paintings

It's been ages since I shared any type of DIY project here on the blog! Basically because I had no more projects to really do at my current home. Now that we are moving into our new house you can expect lots more projects, especially things that involve paintings!! My friend Kara decided she wanted to try making a Crayon Painting over the weekend and asked me if I'd like to join in on the fun! I said YES of course. :)


Have you heard of paintings with crayons? I had not and was very excited to see what it was all about. I am going to show you what we did and how we made it happen! Let's start with your supply list:


For the glue, you should use a strong epoxy. I tried using my hot glue gun and some of my crayons got blown off by the hairdryer. Most stayed on, but it's best to use something stronger I think. I also suggest a HUGE drop cloth because once the wax starts to melt it kinda just goes EVERYWHERE. There were 3 of us making paintings: Alex, Kara and myself. First I will share Alex's painting...

She decided to paint her canvas black and leave a white opening in the center in the shape of a heart.
She then broke crayons in half and glued them around the heart.



Once the glue dried for a few minutes, it was time to start melting the crayons with the hairdryer.



If you have the hairdryer on high, it melts pretty fast. The lower setting is good if you want more control.
Alex let one side dry before flipping the canvas over to melt the other side of crayons.



Then she decided to paint the center of her heart blue.
It think it turned out pretty cute!


Now I'll share with you Kara's painting.
She also painted her canvas black and glued the full crayons at one end of it.



Kara wanted to melt all of her crayon out, causing waves of color....



Her painting had a very textured look to it. Layers of wax...



Now we'll look at mine. I decided to paint my canvas pink, go figure!
I tried to pick coordinating colors for mine....



I started with fewer crayons and ended up adding more later...



I also felt my painting needed something else, so I painted the words over the wax...



I love color so much, so I thought it was fitting. So, what do you think of our paintings??
It was really fun, just make sure NOT to forget lots of drop cloths!!
Pinterest is full of all kinds of inspiration for all different types of "crayon wax" paintings, you can view them HERE.