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greenmachine suggested I pop on over and share some of my art project ideas. I have so many. Right now I'll share how I got a large piece of artwork for my living room for just $6.
Wally had some clearance wall art. One was really big, about three feet tall by two feet wide. The frame had this nice woven pattern in the wood, but the image inside was a palm tree, which was on its way out as far as home fashion trends. Well, I remembered seeing a pretty poster at the dollar store of a flower that happend to match the paint in my living room. So I picked up the poster and replaced the palm tree image with the new poster. I had to do a little trimming to get it to fit correctly and I had fiddle a little to get the image to fit correctly inside the mat, but it really isn't noticeable when on the wall. That wall was bare for the longest time, bugging the heck out of me. Here's a little image of the finished wall art.
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That's lovely. You can hardly buy a bedside photo frame for $6, never mind get something as great as that! Hmmm, I need to pay attention to posters more.
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I find Dollar General gets in nice pieces of art. I like the Live, Love, Laugh type of things. They're on the way out too. Right now DG has an Americana range that's kinda old fashioned and grungy looking. It's nice.
I'm impressed with your creativity, rleahy! :)
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Heck, I never get good ideas like that LOL. Excellent tip there, rleahy and a very nice job you made of that too!
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Okay, another idea that worked for me. My couches are about 11 years old now and I don't see getting rid of them any time soon. But with kids and life in general, slip covers became a necessity. I usually try to buy curtain fabric or sheets and repurpose them for my sewing projects, but I couldn't find anything tough enough for the couch. After looking around at fabric stores and thinking about the time and effort involved, I decided to just buy some high-quality covers on sale from BB&B.
I already had two kinds of leftover fabric. One floral pattern that I had used to make chair cushions that I found in the remnants at Joann's, and another from making the roman shades in the room. Those were made out of Christmas Tree Shop Shades on sale. You can get two or three roman shades out of one full sized curtain. Any way, I took the scraps and bought one additional love seat slip cover. I used that fabric to make coordinating pillows on the couch and a slip cover for the ottoman. The result is a perfectly coordinated room and a very low price!
This is the best shot I could find:
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Love the picture and the couch! Impressive work you did there. :)
How do you find slip covers stay on, are they a pretty secure fit? I was going to buy them before and my friend told me they're always needing adjusted to fit properly every time somebody gets up. I couldn't be bothered with that. And hello to the boys! :)
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Another nice job! :) Are roman blinds hard to make, rleahy? I've seen roman blind kits but have never tried it. They look very classy. I'm a real beginner so they might be beyond what I could do.
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Speaking of blinds, I'm adding this in case any of you want to make some as a reminder about the free safety kits available.
http://billeater.com/content/fix-your-window-blinds-free-and-potentially-save-a-childs-life
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releahy, thanks very much for sharing those great ideas! I appreciate you doing that and will be tramping down those photo frame aisles myself now to see what I'm missing. :)
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What a brilliant job you did on the chair covers! Do you hand sew or machine sew, rleahy?
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I need you to move into my house and do all that, rleahy. Just let me know when you're coming LOL. ;)
I covered a couch once and cheated by hot gluing the covers on the cushions. Worked great too! Until I realized I wouldn't be able to wash them... doh!
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I need you to move into my house and do all that, rleahy. Just let me know when you're coming LOL. ;)
I covered a couch once and cheated by hot gluing the covers on the cushions. Worked great too! Until I realized I wouldn't be able to wash them... doh!
LOL. One of those "it seemed a good idea at the time" moments. :) Thanks for the ideas, rleahy. They are great! I hope you share many more with us.
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Another nice job! :) Are roman blinds hard to make, rleahy? I've seen roman blind kits but have never tried it. They look very classy. I'm a real beginner so they might be beyond what I could do.
I can't tell you all how good it makes me feel that my ideas help!!! No. roman blinds are not that hard to make. You need:
A piece of scrap wood, measure to fit the length inside the frame of your window, about 1/2" on each side. Five screw eyes, not that big. I wish I had a good measurement for you! When looking, remember they need to screw into your 1/2" of wood. Screw them into the wood. These will hang straight down after you mount the wood. With the wood laying flat and screw eyes facing you, staple the hook side of hook and loop tape across the length of the wood. You will attach your shades to this when they are done.
If you are not good with a drill, ask your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend to drill a pilot hole in the wood, going the same direction as the screweyes through the wood. You need two pilot holes. Use them to screw the wood to the inside frame of the window, leaving 1/4" clearance to access the hook tape.
Next you sew. I use a machine, but if you don't have one, there is no reason you can't do it by hand. It just takes longer! You will need:
Enough fabric to cover the flat area of the window, plus 2" on the sides, 1" on the top and 8" on the bottom. You'll also need some curtain wieghts, those white plastic circles (find them in sewing notions), matcing thread and a liner fabric that works with your main fabric. Now here's where it gets a little tough to explain. I'm not any expert technical writer. But basically, the liner fabric is cut to the same size as the window opening, but the fabric you will see in the room needs to be bigger. You fold in the edges and sew the fabrics together wrong sides facing, to hem the showing fabric around the liner fabric. Along the top seam, sew the loop side of the hook and loop tape. That's where you will attach it to the wood. Try to make it neat, but bad sewers, don't worry. No one will notice mistakes but you.
Once you are done with that, roughly guess where you want the curtain to fold. Practice with a piece of scrap fabric to see how it will look, then mark your fabric accordingly. The bends will fall half way between each of the white circles. Sew the white circles evenly apart at the heights you choos from teh top of the curtain. The first row should be about 4" from top of the window. You'll end up with four rows of three white circles. For me, it's easiest to use the button setting on the machine and sew the loops on where I want them. Some people sew a place for tubing to add rigidity. It will depend on your fabric. Light fabrics are fine without the tubing.
Once you place your rings, attach the curtain to the hook and lool tape. Next you need to measure the curtain string. You can buy big rolls of it at the fabric store. Measure out five strings, making sure they are long enough to go from the farthest ring to the farthest screw eye on the window. Tie one end of each string to the lowest ring and run them up through the other rings. Run each one through the corresponding screweye then across to the right or left most screweye (your choice) until you have five strings going through the farthest screweye. Gather the strings together and tie them all into one not. If you are feeling adventurous, you can string them all through a 5-string cinch cord pulley and then gather them. The pulley gets mounted next to the wood.
Mount a (what do you call it?!?!) thing on the wall to tie the cord around to hold the curtains up and keep the cord away from small throats. I did the best I could with photos to try to explain what I am doing such a bad job at with words.
I learned to do this by investing in a small high-quality roman shade for my bathroom, which was the smallest area window in the house. I just looked at that and did my best to copy it. I have saved so much money this way! Good luck to you all....and keep up all those awesome tips!
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Oh, by the way!!! I forgot that some of my roman shades have no rings or string. In my baby room, I just sewed some flaps that look like those shoulder buttons on safari shirts. Ugh, what is that called?!?!?! It's like a strip of fabric with a button hole in it that you can attach to a button. Well, if you attach two of those evenly spaced on the lining side of the curtain, and sew two buttons in the corresponding locations on the fabric side of the curtain, you can roll up the curtain, attach the buttons and they hold up the curtain. Some people just sew strings on either side, roll up the curtain and tie the two strings together to hold up the curtain. That's probably the easiest way.
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Bless you for spending so much time on that description, rleahy! I thought you explained that well and thanks for the pics too.
Your second post about the tabs is great timing especially. I broke one of the cords on my little slatted blinds in my bedroom and it bugs me that I can't pull them up. I could make your tabs and loop them round it if I just roll them up by hand, I think. I'll try pluck up the courage to do the roman blinds to replace that.
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Thanks, pennywise. Let us know how you make out. I didn't intend to write such a long thing, it was just that once I started there reallly wasn't any turning back LOL!
That is very pretty, rleahy. Your colors are so warm. Beautiful and a bargain as well! :) I didn't even know Wally had art. I must head to the home decor side of the store next time! I don't go further than sheets and towels usually.