A Few Little Projects

'Tis the season when I want to start spray painting crap. I've blogged about spray painting things white,  and I pondered whether to paint my owl lamp (it's in its pristine state as of this writing). This year I did not paint any pumpkins, as I have in the past, so I have an itchy trigger finger. Meet the next victims.

Anyway, this is becoming one of those spray painting blogs, but I can't help it, because I did not dumpster dive these birdies, my mother-in-law brought 'em to my house and said, "Help me figure out what color to spray paint these guys." Then she left them with me so I could study their personalities. What I've decided is that they want to be silver for Christmas.

This might be a good time to review my post from last year, How Tacky Do You Let Yourself Get For The Holidays. Pretty sure we decided that the sky's the limit. So those guys are going to be silver, and this very unremarkable metal wreath I have that doesn't show up against my front door, it's going to be silver too. Anything else that gets in my way?

Silver.

Also around the house, I've been slowly getting my dining room and office together following their repainting. I think that was in September? Geez. But these things need to ripen. I've had a few big fabric panels sitting folded on a shelf, like forever, that I wanted to frame and hang. The other day I finally did. These two are Marimekko, and as you can see they're the same design in different colorways.

Here's a better view of where I'm going to put them, both together on that wall. I wanted a big bold thing going on there, and I think these fit that bill.

After I got them onto the stretchers, I texted my friend David a picture of them and said, "I'm thinking of putting these right next to each other on the same wall. Or have I lost my mind? Talk me down." He said, "In theory, that's nuts. But I'm seeing it. Do it." So I'm going to hang them. I've left them leaning together against the wall so I could try them on, but now I'm ready.

I also framed the fabric I bought at Ikea that time my sister threatened to punch a guy. That's going in my office. I'll show a pic when I get it all together.

If you have a piece of fabric you'd like to make a wall hanging of, it is dead simple. You just need four of those wooden stretcher pieces (they have them at Michael's or art supply stores), an iron, and a staple gun. The trick is figuring out which part of the image to show, and then getting it straight on the stretchers. Then it's easy peasy lemon squeezy.

And if you have any little pieces left over and you don't want to waste them, you could do what my sister did and put them in embroidery hoops. Like so. This is in my sunroom.

I'm going to give this treatment to some old toddler t-shirts and sentimental things of the kids' that I still have. Like, cut out the design and put it in a hoop, then hang it on Hank's wall and leave it there until he goes to college. Then after he drives away, I'll walk into his empty room and sit on his bed. Then my eyes will land on the little embroidery hoop containing a piece of his old "100% Love" shirt, and then I'll have a good soaking cry. So thanks for that, embroidery hoops.

(I should say that my finally getting to the fabric panels was inspired by Aimee and her excellent 30 Days of No Procrastination project. Props to her!)

Y'all got any Holiday craftiness going on?

xo
b