Fun stuff.

When I was younger, I was often found doing art projects. Whether it was painting furniture, making cool collages, scrapbooking, or sewing, I enjoyed every bit of it. As life got busier, I let go of those things that relax me. I feel such gratification after finishing a project, and really have been missing that feeling! While I may not have time to do something too often, I want to try to sneak it in. Zach and I are thinking of making this food blog into a general blog, so we can use it as a way to stay connected with friends and family. So, that's why you get to see my crafts!

"Z" and "G" Art


If you haven't been able to tell yet, I am obsessed with Pinterest. It's so much fun to spend mindless time flipping through cool pictures. I like it mainly to, you guessed it, find pictures of things I would like to re-create myself!

In fact, Zach and I were looking at Pinterest, and Zach thought this one was cool. I decided we should do "Z" and "G."

The woman who made this, Elise, described how she did it in her blog here. Looks easy enough, I decided! So, I went to Michaels, again. Good thing it's only 4 blocks away! I picked up two 8x8 wood pieces, and some nails from Target.

Then I painted the two wood pieces with leftover gray paint, and waited for it to dry. Meanwhile, we picked out the letters in the size and font Zach and I wanted, and printed them out. After cutting the letters, measuring, taping them down, and marking where the nails would go, this is what we had.

Now for the fun part of whacking a bunch of nails (and sometimes a finger or two) into some wood. We used 1 inch nails, and the wood was about a 1/2 inch. Luckily, the nails were stable and pierced through the back of the wood just barely. 

"Z" is a cool letter. Zach's so lucky.

Time for the string. I chose red for my "G" and Zach chose yellow for his "Z." Then I realized they were Gryffindor colors. 10 points for us! 10 more points since Gina and Gryffindor start with "G!" We didn't use any real pattern. We just ran the string in a way that looked good.

It's fun to have art on the walls that is meaningful to us, so hanging this up will be nice. Cool, huh?

Button Tree

I found this amazing "Button Tree on Canvas" posting on Pinterest last week, and thought, "Hey, I can totally do that!" So I did. I am so excited about how it turned out and cannot wait for all of you to see it!

Check out the inspiration piece. It was created by artbywiley.

So, I went out to Michael's in the morning, bought myself a 20x16 canvas ($20), gray and brown paint ($10), and buttons ($4). The materials were kind of expensive, but it was totally worth every penny considering how much I love it. Oh, and I also bought brushes, but ended up returning them since, magically, I found brushes in my supplies.

I wanted my background to be a shimmery blue-gray, but couldn't find the right color at the store. The gray is really pretty though, and I picked a dark brown for the tree so it would stand out against the darkness of the gray. Since this was my first time painting something real on canvas, I didn't want to take risks, so that is why I didn't mix any paint.  Anyhow, my first step was to lay a towel out on my bedroom floor, and cover the canvas with the gray paint. I did two coats, and it dried pretty quickly. Then I used a pencil to draw the outline of my tree, but only outlined part of it at a time. I could have free handed it, but considering how many times I changed my mind about a branch here and there, it would have been a mess!

Here's a little more. 

Here it is all done, but it still needed a little touching up. I kept getting my hand in the brown paint and smearing it. Woops. 

My tree all touched up below. I copied the inspiration tree pretty closely because I didn't trust myself enough to draw my own tree. I probably could've done it, but oh well. I freehanded some of my branches, though, so that counts for something, right?

Next came time for the most fun part - placing the buttons! I had 130 buttons, and used probably about 100 of them, but the hot glue gun made it go by pretty quickly.

Here it is all done!

It is now hanging up! I absolutely love it. The gray is a bit dark, but the light color of the buttons helps keep it brighter. Zach is pretty thrilled with it, too!