Pouf placement & a guest bedroom update

Spoiler alert! 

For now, the famous pouf from yesterday's post resides in the guest room. I'd say it's come a long way!

I scored that lamp base at Goodwill for a whopping $7! 

Kitty approves of the new placement.

I'm not calling the space done quite yet, but I think we are open for business. Our nephew Noah was the first one to sleep in the bed, but Emily, Heather, and Brittany; y'all are welcome back any time. :) (and anyone else who wants to come visit us too!)

DIY diaries : paint stroke canvas

Happy Monday, y'all!

I've got a fun DIY to share today! I've been trying to come up with something for this large canvas I have for a few months now. I had this fun love sign at our last apartment, but ended up painting it when we moved here. 

I was less than thrilled with the results, so I took it down and it's been waiting for a stroke of creative genius since then. :)

This is how it's been sitting for the last year:

I managed to find this pin, which got my brain thinking. 

I really wanted something more monochromatic for this craft, so I thought, why don't I start with white paint and do a gradient of added grey? Well, that's just what I did. I happened to have the white paint that matches our trim on hand and just enough grey paint leftover from our master bedroom. I gathered all of my supplies:

I made sure to lay down some butcher paper because Mark is really picky about his garage floors!

I just brushed the white paint on first to cover up canvas. I made sure to go vertically with the short side of the painting because I knew this is the way I wanted to hang it and I wanted the brush strokes to be part of the art. 

Below is after my first and only coat of just white. I covered up all of the gold and purple but didn't stress about getting it perfect because I liked the rough brush stroke. I painted over the nail head on the edges too, since it was black before.

Then I poured out some more white paint into my rolling tray.

I used a paint stick to drizzle just a little bit of grey into the white and started randomly painting on the canvas.

After my first coat:

I waited about 30 minutes between coats and continued adding more and more grey with each coat until I got it as dark as I wanted it. There are probably about 5 different shades overall. My goal was to be as random as possible but make the piece look whole. 

Here's my finished product:

Here it is in it's final resting place:

I have to say, this is probably one of my favorite DIY art pieces. It's super subtle and doesn't distract from all the other pattern/art I have going on in this room. It was also really easy. This is the 4th thing that has been on this canvas. Do you reuse your canvases too?

Like I said, I had everything I needed at home, but it would be relatively cheap for you to do it even if you don't have everything. Just start with a new canvas (between $5-$30 depending on the size) and buy some white paint as well as whatever colors you want to use. I may end up doing some smaller canvases with more color for pops of homemade art around the house. Love it!

Art collection

This image is floating around Pinterest lately and I just really liked the uniqueness of it and thought it would work really well in our bedroom. I posted some DIY art here that I had done for the bedroom, but I wanted to make it a little more personal and less abstract (plus I'm constantly changing things around here) so I kept this Pinterest image in my mind for a change to come.

I stood in the frame aisle at Target for about 15 minutes trying to decide how mad Mark would be if I spent over $50 on five photo frames (specifically for this project) and ended up deciding it wasn't worth it. I walked out with two frames on sale for $10.48 each, thinking I would buy them in phases so as not to overwhelm my husband. :)

Of course, once I got home I was chomping at the bit to change out the art above our bed, so I improvised. I ended up repurposing the chalkboard hanger that I need to move anyway (it still said "Let it Snow") and found some left over tulle to complete the project. Check it out:

I like to think it's my own original spin on the Pinterest fad. I like it so far! 

I also got around to finally ordering a frame for a print I bought for Mark about 3 years ago. It's a map of Canada with typographic details for each province. Kind of cool, we think! It lives at the end of our hallway now. 

We aren't super fancy or cultured but we like having meaningful art around here! What about you, what do you collect?