Dining room art re-do

In keeping with my current trend of replacing all of the things in our place that I don't love anymore, I updated some of the things in our dining room. The first thing I did was spray paint a gold mirror. Now it's a gorgeous red! Super simple to do too. I simply taped some plastic bags over the glass and sprayed 2 coats. 

Before! 

During. 

During. 

After! 

So easy and by using materials I already had, this one didn't cost anything! 

Next I was inspired to repaint some art that was hanging on an adjacent wall. I really wanted to put some more red on the walls, so thankfully I had more leftover red spray paint. I had 2 coordinating pieces that were painted on wood. Each piece was one foot by 2 feet. The original art was black and white and floral. 

The first thing I did was use this amazing product again to cover the old art. 

I love this stuff! 2 coats and I was ready to go! 

Once the primer dried, I sprayed them with 2 coats of my favorite red spray paint. Now for the unbelievably tedious part. I had a pack of leftover scrapbook paper from a project I had done in our living room. 

I made a couple stencils to trace and started to trace and cut and trace and cut and trace and cut. 

These were the stencils. 

I traced 2 of the big ones and 2 of the little ones on the back sides of the scrapbook paper. Then I made 2 circles by tracing the inside of my roll of masking tape. 

These would be the center of 2 flowers. Once I had all my pieces cut out, I started laying them out in a pattern I liked. 

Next step, mod podge! I glued them all down, trimmed the edges, and put a layer of mod podge over the whole thing. After it dried, this is the final project! 

Ta da! I love this one! Super easy, and again, it didn't cost anything since I already had all the materials on hand. 

Probably my favorite part of this project was that I didn't have to put any new holes in the wall. Since I hung the artwork where it was originally hung I simply had to put it right back on the wall where it was before! 

Orange artwork to orange you going to love this new artwork!

I have been wanting to replace a few things in our place that I just don't love any more. The first one was a project in our bedroom. I found these paintings a couple years ago and I really liked them in the store. I loved the price too. I got both of them for about $15. However, when I brought them home I didn't love them anymore. They were too orange for our bedroom. So they hung on our wall mocking me for the past 2 years. 

One night I asked my husband if I could change them into something else. I told him my ideas and he let me run with it. I really didn't want to spend much money on them so I decided to paint over them. Plus, I used many materials I had leftover from baby room projects. All in all, I spent about $10 on this project. 

The first thing I had to do was paint over the orange flowers. I used this amazing product to cover it up. 

This stuff is amazing. I had used it for the baby's toy box. 2 coats of it and I was ready to roll. 

After this stuff dried, I painted them gray. The gray paint is one of the only things I didn't already have on hand. 

After 2 coats of gray paint, it was time for the most time consuming part. I am loving the chevron right now. I originally wanted to get a stencil or draw it on first. Finally I decided just to tape it off and paint over. This was an easy thing to do, but it took a long time and a lot of tape. I made sure all of my pieces of tape were 3 inches long and cut them as straight as possible. I started in the top left corner and taped and taped and taped. 

This was so tedious, especially since I was doing this on 2 canvases. It took about an hour just to apply the tape. Then I painted 2 coats of black paint. 

I have learned the hard way to not pull the tape off too soon, so I waited as long as I could to yank it off. I loved the way it turned out! 

To finish it, I took some letters from the Hob Lob, painted them red with some leftover paint, and glued them down. Here it is hanging in our bedroom. 

Now, if you noticed, only one of them is completed. I still need to finish the second one, but I need another "x". I am making our wedding date in Roman numerals. It's going to hang right under this one. I can't wait to have that one finished, but I ran into a snafu with the letters. I bought most of them one day and had to go back another day to pick up the rest because they didn't have them all. Well, when I went back I discovered that they had discontinued the letter x! Not the whole set, just x. Poor x. It must feel like Pluto did when it was downgraded from being a planet. Hopefully it won't get kicked out of the alphabet altogether. 

Blog dump...it's been a while!

I know that it has been a super long time since I have posted, but my life has been incredibly busy. I have so many projects that I want to put on my blog, but for tonight I will just catch you up on the reasons for my long absence. 

1. Baby--This little man is the main (and BEST) reason for my long absence. I am overjoyed to be his mommy. His personality is developing and he is incredibly silly. He loves to be tickled, loves bath time, and loves to eat. He is 7 months old, has 2 teeth, can sit up all by himself, and loves music. 

2. School--School has finally ended for the summer and I am so thankful for time to spend being a better wife to my husband and a stay at home mom. I am so thankful that I am a teacher and that I do get so much time off with my guys. Second semester was such a blur. Going back to work was so difficult, but I had a GREAT year! It was busy, busy, busy, but I had awesome parents and coworkers who made it very easy to both be on maternity leave and return from leave. 

3. Sleep--Not that I've been doing a lot of it, but it has certainly kept me from my blog. When I have a few minutes, sleep is what I would rather do. Little man has only recently begun sleeping better. I have learned that I can function on much less sleep than I ever thought possible. And the "sleeping through the night" is a dirty lie. I feel like its been a good night if we get 5 hours in a row! 

4. Pinterest--It's an addiction. I found in the last few months instead of using my brain power to blog, I preferred the mindless scrolling that Pinterest had to offer. Truly it is my search engine now. It's made me make more crafts, cook new recipes, and laugh harder than I should while the baby is sleeping. If you are ever bored, get on there and look at the humor boards. So funny! And a good time filler when I'm up at a 3 a.m. feeding. 

Ok that is a pretty pathetic list of reasons, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I have a pretty awesome life right now.