Easy Fabric Art

(I apologize for the lack of picture to illustrate the steps of this project, I did it a long time ago and didn't have the foresight to document it!)

My bedroom colors are white, gray and a hint of light pink (so far the only actual pink is from my super awesome pillow)

Anyway, when one is presented with a large white wall and a limited budget, its time to get creative!

IKEA used to carry these awesome wood frames, which I have yet to find again, but no worries! I found canvas stretcher bars at Hobby Lobby and I'm sure other art stores carry them as well. The upside of these stretcher bars is more flexibility for size and shape, as you buy each side individually and they are very easy to assemble. But the frames I bought from IKEA were about 20" x 20", which was a bit small for my space so I bought four to group together. (If you had a longer space, say above a couch, three in a row would be really rad.)

Then you select a fabric to wrap around the frames. Its best to chose a print that is large to fit the scale of the space. I decided to chose a gray fabric with a large white flower for three of the frames and a white with small gray flowers for the fourth (even though this is a small print, the flowers are grouped together read like a larger print).

When wrapping the frames in fabric its important to work with all four sides at once, from the inside out. I used a hammer and nails but when my students did this project, they used a staple gun, which they preferred. Begin by stapling the center of the top of your fabric to the center of the top of your frame. Second staple the center of the bottom of your fabric to the center of the bottom of the frame, pulling very tight. Repeat on the right and left sides. Then continue to staple, moving out from the center and pulling tight as you rotate between stapling all four sides. IKEA totally gets how a picture is worth a thousand words and so I'm going to put a picture of the instructions that came with these niffty frames, because hopefully my rambling and these pics together will be easier to understand.

And now for the finished product:

I absolutely love these art pieces and I can't believe how affordable they were. Def a DIY that looks super professional.

Logo!

Last December when I was preggo with Baby O, I team taught a class to interior design teachers from around Utah. Two awesome things happened that day: Fred, the construction teacher, was super nice and said all these great things about me (My students have designed two houses that Fred has built. Pictures? Unfortunately not.) The second thing was when my team teacher showed a lesson she does with her advanced class. She has them create a logo and they use that logo to label all of their assignments through out the year. And I was like, DUH. Such an awesome idea. Because I'm always looking for ways to make my class more commercial and less high school. And I actually thought, "I want to be a stay at home mom!! But I also want to teach one more year so I can have my students do this assignment!" I didn't have a choice, I had to work, so you better believe I took the chance to have my students do the logo assignment!!! I started by showing them my logo and it just reminded me how much I LOVE IT! It was designed by a friend of a friend, Caley Park. I've loved reading her blog and I'm learning so much from her! You can see my blog header, which is her design. And here are the blog button and facebook page versions, that I will use if I ever get to that point!




So we had a great time today designing logos and coming up with fun names for our design companies. My fav: Kick Ash Design (Her name is Ashlee! So cute!) When they're done, I'll post some of my favorites (with permission, of course!) I miss my girl (who had her first day at daycare and had a great time! Of course she was sleeping every time I came to check on her!) but if I have to work, this job rocks!