Finished Project: Reimagined Picture Frames.

In the interest of saving money on my master bedroom remodel, I've been scouring thrift stores and clearance racks for items I think would work with the new décor. Normally, the biggest part of my budget would be spent on wall art, because, let's face it, that crap's expensive. I don't think I've ever seen any wall art at Home Goods for less than $30 and even the cheaper stores aren't that much cheaper.

I had some luck at a semi-cheap store in my area called, Family Dollar, where I picked up a couple new frames (with pictures of chairs in them. How random) for $1.80 apiece. I also found a couple of wood frames at the thrift store I frequent for $0.50.

I thought about not upcycling the chair frames, but where's the fun in that?!

Walking through my local craft store, I wandered into the scrapbooking aisle, where I found some scrap booking paper on sale for $0.19 per page. And BONUS: they're decorated differently on both sides!

I didn't want to be too matchy matchy so I grabbed these completely different pages.

It was pretty simple after that. I just cut each page down to size and placed it within the frame. For the cloud one, I used the other side of one of the scraps and put it with it just to make it a little different.

I love them!

A slightly closer view.

....That's not it though, I have some more frames that need my help. These were purchased during my numerous thrift store outings,too,but unlike my other frames, these would need to be painted.

Each on of these cost me $0.50 at different thrift stores/Goodwill.

I got the idea for what to put inside of these frames a couple of weeks ago when I was rifling through old books at the thrift store. I saw some old illustrated books about animals and thought, "these pictures would look pretty cool on my wall." So I picked out a couple of books (at $0.10 per book).

The two books I decided on. I have no idea why I got the cross stitch one. Lol.

I'm starting to have a little hoard of spray paints in my basement.

I grabbed a couple of spray paints, some newspapers, and my frames and painted them outside really quickly. They dried in no time! I love spray paint! Then came the task of figuring out which pictures to put in which frames:

This horse picture is the picture that originally gave me this idea!

I'd let Quinn paint earlier in the day and this was one of her masterpieces. Matches the frame pretty well.

Just to change it up, I decided to use a sketch from the book as opposed to a color print.

OK, I might not keep it, but I tore out this cross stitch picture just to see if it would look dumb. The jury's still out on it's ugliness.

They're not so awesome looking on my floor, but they'll be awesome on the walls!

I'm really looking forward to being done remodeling my bedroom. I can't wait to see how everything looks together. I'm hoping to have it completed by the end of the summer, but who knows, considering the original modeling was never actually completed! It's the room I put the least amount of effort into because it gets the least amount of visitors! Hahah

Keep an eye out for these pictures in other blog posts in the mean time because they might get re purposed into other rooms!

Finished Project: Painted Ikea Dresser.

There's this store called Ikea and I drool every time I check out their website. I'm not sure if there are any Ikea's in Peru or France (I assume that's where you guys live because my blog tracks the countries of my visitors and you guys are my most loyal fans! Thanks for reading!), but there's one in my country. The only problem is that it's 8 million light years away from my house, even if you speed to get there.

Lucky for me, my husband and I had to drive down to that area for a family event and left EXTREMELY early so he could buy me stuff from Ikea.

I only bought two things (I really wanted to buy about 47 things, but I somehow managed to hold back) = a cabinet thing for my dining room and a dresser for my bedroom.

I picked an unfinished dresser because I wanted to transform it. I had a beautiful blank canvas to work with after my husband slaved over assembling it for me:

Thank goodness for big driveways!

I decided to paint it white with a silver accent. That way, I could repurpose it without repainting it. So, I grabbed all my materials:

Paint, paint brush, spray paint, and lace. Maybe you already know where this is going.

I took the drawers out and painted everything white.

This is a horrible picture, but you can still tell the drawer fronts are white.

I needed to take a bit of a break to let the dresser/drawers dry, so I pretended to be a model...

It's hard to be a model.

I ended up painting two coats of white just to make sure I had the best base for what I needed to do next...

But, wait... At that same moment, Joe was playing with his chainsaw in the front yard.

He's so manly, I'm surprised I was able to get any work done!!

He sent Quinn over to me to show me something in their pail...

A big huge frog!! Gross. I haven't taught her to be scared of frogs yet on purpose or accident.

Anyway, Husband, stop being so sexy. And Kids, stop being so cute. I have a dresser to finish painting!!

While waiting for the second coat to dry, I spray painted the drawer pulls.

Drawer pulls before.

Drawer pulls after.

Back to the drawers. This is the part that makes this project blog worthy.

I laid the lace lovingly over the drawers...

I paid $0.25 for it at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago.

I tried to model with my spray paint to make my spray paint seem more interesting.

Then I sprayed as evenly as I could over the lace/drawer.

The sun makes this look pretty ugly, but it looks really cute in person!

I did this to all the drawers except for one. I decided to keep at least one drawer white to, hopefully, add some drama.

Remember the blue lamp shade?! I bought a new lamp for it.

I am pleased with how my dresser turned out. I like that it adds a little interest in my boring bedroom. My remodel is coming along quite nicely and I can't wait for it to be finished.

I could've done a better job making it even. I don't know how, but I'm sure it's possible.

A close up picture.

One thing to mention though: I'd have liked the design on the lace be more prominent. Thinking back, if I'd taped it down on all four sides, I might've gotten a more striking design. Oh well. I hope that information helps if you decide to do a version of this on your furniture.

I Had A Bit Of A Makeover... Again!!

As you all may know, I dye my hair a lot. But what you might not know is that I now live somewhere that has well water and from what I've read, it has minerals and stuff in it that can be really tough on hair, especially dyed hair. So, I took a break from dyeing it.

I hadn't dyed my hair since New Years Eve and up until recently, I looked like this:

At my parents house to celebrate Father's Day. Mitchell didn't really feel like taking pictures.

Not bad.. But not too interesting either. Although, I will sing the praises of not dyeing my hair for the last 7ish months:

1. I saved some time.
2. I saved some money.
3. I didn't worry about my roots growing out.
4. And most importantly, I ascertained that I have absolutely no gray hair!! Woo hoo!

Anyway, I got bored with my hair.

I asked my husband and my mom if they'd think I was nuts to go completely outside of the realm of "natural hair colors." Both of them told me to go for it. It'd be cool, not poser-y.

On a whim, I went to the store and grabbed some funky hair dye and this is what I look like now:

Why is the quality on my camera phone so poor?! I spent quite a bit of money on it!

I didn't do the greatest job in the making the color even department, but it was my first try. I was nervous that I'd dye my entire head and face blue, so I held back a little.

I took my blue hair to the beach and got A LOT of stares!!

I am thrilled with it, though. I want to continue to have blue hair (at least for a little while). Joe also loves it. He thinks it's very rock and roll a la Katy Perry.

OK, so maybe not exactly Katy Perry, but her essence.

My mom also loves it. In fact, I kind of talked her into dyeing her own hair a funky color (well, hers is wash out so it'll only last a week or two, but it still counts).



It's too bad hers washes out so fast. We make a cute couple.

I've had a few compliments on my bright blue hair, mostly from Facebook friends. Most people I see on the regular are pretty silent on the whole thing. I'm thinking their silence is because they don't like it or think it's not me or something. And to them, I'd like to say this:

It's fun to take chances and go outside the norm sometimes, especially when it doesn't hurt anyone. For me, my YOLO ("You Only Live Once," for people who might not know) moment was slathering my head in blue hair dye, but your YOLO moment might be something totally different.Go out and have one. Come back and tell me all about it because I bet it'll be awesome and make you happy and vibrant and that's what life's about!!! (Too many and's? Probably, but I'm not a professional writer, so please don't be too hard on me! Lol)

I've been living it up at the beach this summer, too!!

So, now when you see my blog pics with blue hair, you won't worry there's something wrong with the color/saturation settings on your computer.

P.S. I dyed my hair blue about 10 days ago and it's already faded to a greenish color. If I plan to keep this up, I'll need to figure out 2 things:

1. How not to ruin my towels or shower.
2. How to make the color stick around a little longer!

Any help is appreciated as I'm in no rush to go back to human hair colors!!