Art Therapy

I love me some Pinterest. I spend at least 15 minutes a day perusing the art and home decor sections trying to get ideas for my current apartment and trying to really iron out my style. It really does help that all of my nutty ideas are in one place.

This morning I set out to spruce up my apartment with some DIY art. I dabbled in DIY art a few years ago and it turned out great but I just hadn't had the itch to get creative until this week. With all the craziness going on in my extended family right now, I needed a creative outlet. After doing some Pinterest research I settled on doing an abstract art project and another using painters tape. I visited Michael's yesterday and purchased my canvases. I was able to get two double packs (2 for 1 sale!!!). Stopped by the dollar store this morning and bought some paint brushes. Most of all I was excited to use the leftover house paint that has been sitting under my kitchen sink for months.

First up was my painter's tape art; I used this image as inspiration

Unfortunately, my canvas wasn't this long so I had to improvise a little. I wish I could say that I took pics along the way but no such luck. When I get excited, my mind doesn't work well. So first , I taped off a design that I liked, there really wasn't any rhyme or reason to it. Then I got out my paints and my brushes and filled in the spaces. I was left with these beauties:

G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S
The photo really doesn't do it justice. These little things have brightened up our living room so much. We only have one window in our living room and it's off center, which means there's a whole half of the room that gets no light :-(  I really need light in my life.

My next project was for our bedroom. We moved to our current place last August and haven't touched the bedroom. Since all we do is sleep in there, It didn't seem like painting was necessary. We were so wrong. It's drab, depressing and not the sanctuary I would've liked it to be. I won't make the same mistake in our next place.

So, I got out my next two pack of canvases and set to work with the same colors, using this as inspiration:

I swirled each color onto the canvas first and then blended the colors together using my brush. Then I alternated swirling and blending with each individual color until I was happy with it. Ended up with this:

Now they're hanging over our headboard. They're calming and they add some color :-)  I think I might actually redo this project using a much larger canvas in the next few weeks and place the smaller ones somewhere else in the room. I really am SO proud of myself because I am not an artist! I really can't draw to save my life. I think this is why I've always been drawn to abstract art.

Bonus project: El Hubster and I have been collecting movie ticket stubs since we met way back when in 2006! I've had them sitting in a zip lock bag just waiting for a way to use them in our space. I finally decided I would use them to make art we could look at every day. I used this as my inspiration:

On the same trip to Michaels (geez Michaels!! Has anyone ever gotten out of Michaels in less than two hours??) I picked up some popcorn themed scrapbook paper and mounted it to a poster sized frame. Then I mounted each ticket on top and hung it up. Not the best picture but...Easy peasy!