Spring Gallery Wall

Well...this post was going to be on how I made my silhouette pictures, but it has turned a new direction.  I want to makeover my oldest daughter's silhouette with her hair pulled up, but I haven't gotten around to doing so.  It's super easy - no photo editing program involved.  Unless you have one - which would make the process easier.  I simply took a profile picture of my children and then traced around their outline onto black card stock and then cut it out.  I taped the silhouette onto scrapbook paper and taped it under a picture mat.  When I make her silhouette over I will show the process. 

My title gives away the subject of this post.  I am going to show how I have laid out pictures on my gallery wall. 

I can remember looking at the pages of Pottery Barn while thinking to myself, "What crazy person changes the pictures hanging on their walls according the to seasons?"  I can now say....I am one of those people.

This is what it looked like back in October 2010.  No shelves and no coordinating of pictures.  Just pictures grouped nicely on the wall.

I tend to be more of a symmetrical girl.  This arrangement is not symmetrical but it is all balanced out.  You can see in this picture that photos are hung at the same height on the wall.

Here is what it looks like today.

It is very unsymmetrical! 

My poor handy husband repaired a lot of holes of me moving pictures here and there.

All of these frames with mats and 2 different sizes of shelves came in a kit, actually there are several kits pictured here.  I can't remember where I got them originally maybe Bed Bath & Beyond? 

I started with pictures of last year's Easter of my kiddos, except for the one shown of them sitting on the couch. 

I didn't want the wall to be so picturey.  I wanted to add other elements in it.

I started with my bunny.

I iron transferred the bunny on burlap and then stapled in onto a square piece of wood.  This is quite a close-up and I'm noticing the fabric is not so straight.  It's propped up against a family photo.

I printed the same bunny off from my printer onto the same scrapbook paper as the silhouettes.

I like the consistency of the images.  Before, I would have found different pictures of bunnies.  But why?  I like the image why not use it in another way.  I have used the nest picture and the bunny picture in other areas of my home.

The picture of the nest and the definition of nest are printed off onto a linen textured card stock paper.

And there it is!  I love how it's casual; pictures propped up and the different textures of fabric and moss and the decorative eggs.  I'm happy with it!

I've already started thinking about what I will do for Summer.

One more thing......this chair!

If you don't recognize the chair it's from Pottery Barn.  First time I saw it, I fell in love.  I fell in love with the basket weave!  I just had to have it.  And so when money was given to us, I made the trip to the PB store 50 miles away, purchased it, put it into our Suburban and drove home. 

This chair is detested by my handy husband with a passion!  Not only does he dislike the look but the comfort is somewhat undesirable.  He also dislikes how it came to live inside our home.  I used some, or I should confess, all our 5th wedding anniversary gift money to buy it without fully consenting him.  He knew I was going to be buying a chair.  What he didn't know that it was THIS chair and the actual price.

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My new found love of moss!

 Moss, Moss, Moss!  It's my new love!  Maybe it's the color or maybe it's the texture.  Whatever it is, you can't mess up with moss.  Moss is definitely messy...so probably I should say you can't go wrong with moss.  I've mossed quite a few things in my house.  I mossed the same Dollar store balls found in this post.  And I have several "G"s in my house that have been mossed.

I feel moss blends itself so well with Easter decor and color.

When I was deciding on what to display in my kitchen on a small wall space, naturally I turned to moss.

The polish pottery hard-boiled egg holders needed to go. 

I've seen the word "EAT" in many pictures of kitchens on design blogs and magazines.  I wanted to do something similar. 

So this is what you need and this is what I did.

I printed off the word "eat" in a basic font from my computer- I think I used Ariel. 

I cut out the letters and started tracing them on to a cardboard with carbon tracing paper, which you can find in any office supply store. 

I started to cut the letters out but cutting cardboard is difficult with scissors in some areas.  I needed to get my xacto blade and cutting mat out to finish them.

There they are!  The best thing is that your cutting doesn't need to be perfect.  The moss will cover all the areas that you may have not cut straight.

Then I put on hot glue and pressed the moss into it.

For the edges I simply just added more hot glue to the edge and wrapped the moss around it.  Some areas I needed to add more to the edge to cover.

One thing I have seen around blogland is that some people leave their freshly glued moss in a more of a "loose" look.  I wanted mine to be nice and neat.  So I trimmed them up quite a bit.  You can see this in the close-up picture at the bottom.

In the above pictures the "T" was looking a little more green the other two letters.  I just hot glued more moss on top of what was already there.  That fixed it.

Also I would add one clean-up tip.  Cover your work area with something!  I cut a plastic bag and spread it out onto my counter top.  When I finished I carefully folded up the bag and threw it in the trash.  The first time I didn't do this and it was one big mess!

I took down my egg holders and put them in place.  Love it!  It's a small wall space and they fit perfectly. 

My hubby said he didn't know if he liked moss and his food together.  I agree, but this is not near our food preparations and it's going to stay for awhile. 

I really like my mossy "eat"!

Have you mossed anything lately?

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Revised Spring Tree

  I was not completely happy with my flowers on my spring tree.  I came across this wonderful blog that made tissue paper cherry blossoms that I decided to give a try.



Sarahndipities

Her flowers look so real..at first I thought they were!  She has a tutorial on how to make them found here.

Well I got out my tissue paper and got to work Saturday night. 

My new favorite color is ivory, cream, off-white whatever you want to call.  I knew I wanted the outer part of the flower to be ivory with a light pink center.

I ripped off the old flowers and hot glued these on along with my ribbon leaves. 

I didn't care so much on how they would typically grow.  I randomly placed the flowers on the branches so that it all balanced out.

I'm lovin' this new look.  The flowers are bigger and adds more spring color to the space.  It also pulls your eye downward to my crepe paper balls.  You can find the ball tutorial here.

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Spring Tree

Our sweet daughter finally learned how to ride a bike without training wheels this weekend! 

I've come to the realization that learning to ride a bike is a lot like learning to use the potty.  We have tried for the last 2 summers without training wheels and she simply was not having any part of it.  But once her mind was on that task she wanted to keep doing it and doing it until she got it.  It was very similar to our youngest using the potty when he turned three.  Up until then he showed no interest and we were not going to push him (we pushed the older two and it got no where).  Again once he started using it he wanted to keep using it.   It took him a day!  Yes, they have accidents and they will fall.  But it's all part of their learning experience.  They need to go through all of that before they master the task.

In the mist of all the excitement I finally finished my spring tree!

I had branches there before that I painted white and sand papered some of it off - to look more like an aspen branch.  Next, I cut several circles of my goodwill women's shirt and ribbon leaves like I did with my front door wreath found here.

The flowers I just folded the circle and then rolled it up and put a dab of hot glue.  Then I put a leaf with it and hot glued it on to the branch.  Nothing special!  I'm so pleased to how it turned out!

The glittered eggs are nothing but plastic colored eggs glittered in Martha Stewart's glitter (I absolutely love her glitter - it cover so well and you don't even need to paint underneath).  We have bags and bags full of plastic eggs!  We seem to get dozens each year!  I don't know why we can't reuse them...this year we will start! 

The eggs had a horrible visible seam line that I hide with ric-rac ribbon.  No more seam!

My speckled eggs are plastic eggs as well.  These I spend a little more time on.  I hot glued them closed like I did with the glittered eggs but then I painted them with gesso.  You could also prime them but I didn't know how that would work with spraying them.  I then sanded them for a smooth finish and painted them a light brown color.  Next, I dipped my bigger paint brush into brown paint and flicked it on.  A tooth brush would also work.  Again these eggs had that visible horrible seam.  I wrapped twine around them several times and tired it off.  Oh yeah I also thinned brown paint after I speckled them and brushed it on.  I then wiped the majority of it off.  It gave the eggs a variation in color and made the speckles not so prominent.

I plan to be back on Thursday with a tutorial on how to make my paper flower balls.  I just love them...they are all around my house.

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