Budget Makeover: Radiant Red Accents

Hello radiant red!

In an effort to add budget-friendly accents to our new apartment, I have been experimenting with colour. More specifically, I have been experimenting with spray paint. 

I love, love spray paint. It's such an easy, economical way to transform boring or outdated fixtures! For the budget-minded student, or for S and I who are being budget-minded because I'm a student and we're trying to save for a wedding, spray paint is making it really easy to add cute accents to our new apartment. 

For this transformation, I assembled a collection of old and outdated picture frames. I also found a fabulous black and white poster in a pile of items to be recycled at home - score! Whoever bought it - it's mine now! 

Easy Frame Collage

Equipment:

Can of Spray Paint

Assorted Picture Frames

Poster or Large Photo

Art Knife

Steel Ruler

Cutting Mat

I found picture frames at yard sales, thrift stores, and in the pile of things my parents were going to throw out after doing some de-cluttering. Remove the glass and backing to the frame before beginning. 

I purchased this fabulous bright red at a local arts & crafts store. I recommend Krylon Indoor/Outdoor MultiPurpose Paint. It is recommended for use on most surfaces. Always use spray paint outside or in a really well ventilated area. I can't stress this enough. You have no idea how irate my housemates have gotten in the past when their breakfast tastes like paint because I spent the night spray painting in the basement. 

Do your spray painting outside!

I found one coat of paint was more than enough. Applying only one coat allowed some of the original colour of the frame to show through, which made for great variations in colour! Once the paint has dried, spend some time arranging your frames in a way that makes you happy. If you are dissecting a poster rather than using a collection of photos, check out the size and shape and arrange your frames to suit the poster.

Funky painted frames!

Lay your poster out on the cutting mat, and carefully cut blocks of the poster in sizes to suit the picture frames. Measure often.

Before cutting too many blocks of poster, make sure you fit it in the frame to see how it looks with the rest of the frames. How much do you love how the molded frame looks in the candy red colour? And how about that black and white traffic photo? 

I love the molding on the frame!

Almost done!

One more to go!

Are you loving the final product as much as I am? The best part of this transformation is that, if S and I decide this candy-red colour just isn't our thing, it will take a can of paint and about half an hour of my time to change our decor.

Total cost of this makeover? $4.99 + tax - and it left me with half a can of spray paint which I then used to paint other things in the apartment! (S is just so thrilled when I get all artsy on him...)

Painting T-Shirts: An Experiment in Patience

Eight months ago, I must have been an ambitious person. I must have thought to myself: I have no need of free time ever again! I must have assumed what little social life I have wouldn't interfere with volunteering myself to design almost six dozen T-Shirts for an upcoming family reunion. S just thinks I'm crazy.

Hand Painted T-Shirts

This weekend we are travelling about eleven hours to Mont Tremblant, Quebec, to attend a large family reunion. It will be a weekend of fun, excitement, activities, and wine. In a moment of insanity, I volunteered to make personalized shirts for every attending member.

Designing them was the easy part. I used photo editing software (but it's just as easy to use a word processing program) to pick the font and style of the text. I used an art knife to carefully cut out the letters - which takes a lot longer than you might think! Luckily, I was able to monopolize various members of my family to help with cutting out, including S who spent two days cutting stencils. For the front stencils, I used a thick plastic so they would be reusable, but otherwise the paper stencils are single use only.

I used a re-positionable spray adhesive to fix the stencils to the t-shirts. Using spray adhesive makes for nice clean lines, really crisp images and a very sharp result. Overspray is easily cleaned up with rubbing alcohol.

Wait for the spray adhesive to dry before pressing it onto the shirt - this way, it doesn't leave lots of goopy glue marks on the shirt which you would later have to remove with rubbing alcohol. Different types of stencils dry faster than others (the plastic ones take a couple minutes, whereas the paper ones dry almost instantly).

Instead of buying expensive fabric paints, I used acrylic paint. Acrylic paint is water soluble, but permanent in fabric and other textiles once it dries. Give it a 24-hour curing time just to be safe.

Once you're done, carefully peel the stencil off the shirt. If it's not exactly what you hoped for, you have a few minutes to tweak it before the paint sets. Use a paintbrush dipped in water to carefully clean up any messy areas (you'll need lots of water, but be careful not to disturb the areas you like!) or a paintbrush dipped in rubbing alcohol to clean up any areas where the spray adhesive has transferred to the fabric.

Let it dry, and then you're ready to wear your fabulous new shirt! Can you imagine doing 68 of these for a family reunion? S is right - I must be insane.

This was an amazing family reunion - I got to reconnect with relatives, meet new additions to the family, and introduce S to everyone he will soon be related to.

After the family reunion, we headed to Parc National du Mont Tremblant, a really wonderful national park in the heart of Quebec. Three gloriously rainy days later, we found ourselves wandering around the heart of Montreal in anticipation of Wicked - the fabulous fabulous fabulous musical S bought tickets for as a birthday present. Who knew he'd put up with three hours of singing, dancing and costumes for me?

As for me, I'm far too wired for sleep (and singing Wicked songs under my breath, poor S). Tomorrow we have another 8 hour drive ahead of us, and will hopefully find ourselves in Waterloo to visit some cousins and have a (hopefully) successful interview with the university!

Sorry to those who complain I should update more (I'm talking to you Mark) but I haven't been home in forever. More updates to follow.

Awesome Easy Glass Painting

Saturday was a day for crafting. Try this transformation - it's a great way to add life to vases you have lying around the house.

It's been made aware to me that S, fiancé extraordinaire, is a pretty awesome guy. So awesome, in fact, that he goes along with most of my crazy schemes, ideas and plans. When I call him and say, "S, we simply have to go out into the woods to collect car fulls of tall sticks for decorating my parents anniversary party!" He just shrugs and asks when and where (and then brings garbage bags so I don't litter his car with leaves and bugs and things).

So a few weeks ago, when I had a brainstorm for funky wedding decorating ideas, he was fairly cool about it. ("S, lets find dozens and dozens of clear glass vases to paint as centerpieces for the wedding!) He was so cool, in fact, that he helped me search yardsales and thrift stores Saturday morning for clear glass vases, and then took me to my favourite arts and crafts store to purchase more glass paint.

Clear Glass Vases

Four of the vases I picked up at a thrift store, for seventy-five cents apiece (score!) This gorgeous, intricate decanter was from a yard sale for a dollar - in retrospect, they may have not sold it to me had they known I was going to fill it with purple paint.

Gorgeous Decanter

I used PermEnamel for painting. It retails for $5.99 at the arts and crafts store I work at, but went to $1.29 on clearance - and then 50% off all clearance items as a summer sale. For 65 cents a bottle, I purchased many in anticipation of painting a lot of vases for this wedding. 

PermEnamel Glass Paint

This glass paint is perfect for painting more delicate vases. While other paints require you to bake the item in the oven, this paint dries within hours and cures within a week. It's not as durable as other glass paint, but it is waterproof. I chose several different colours of purple (the amethyst colour is gorgeous), as well as red (raspberry sherbet!) blue and silver to mix up into different purples. 

Painting the vase

A very long paint brush worked wonders for painting the inside of the glass. Painting the inside makes for a fabulously professional appearance, but was really difficult for narrow necked vases. Instead, pour paint into the vase and rotate and swish the paint around until the entire inside is covered. The paint cleans up quickly from my hands and the brush with just water. I can't vouch for whether it is washable from clothing - although my shorts are splotched with purple paint, I haven't even tried to wash them yet. 

Painted Glass Vases

In retrospect, my biggest mistake was doing them in the hot sunlight of the backyard. The paint dried too quickly and wound up being streaky on a few vases. They still look great from the outside, but the insides are mottled. The next batch will be better. 

S hasn't seen these yet - I'm hoping he loves them as much as I do. We're hoping to mix and match different shaped vases with different colours of purple paint as the table centerpieces at the wedding - and then fill them with assorted grasses or fronds or sticks...It's an inexpensive alternative to flowers, and we certainly have the time and energy to make them ourselves!