Cartwheels and Pearls

Valentine's Day "Mantle"

I only say "mantle" because our wood burning stove is not home to a real mantle. BUT if I did have a mantle, this is how I would decorate it! I had to leave so I just gave up on putting a lot of things on here and just settled for three framed printables, a garland, and a few spare hearts. We don't use our wood burning stove at all don't be alarmed of any fire concerns!

I found the heart printable here and the both the love printables here

Let's just take a moment to appreciate how lovely this cracked glass is and how lazy I am to either 1. get a new piece of glass for the frame or 2. just get a new frame!

My printer apparently doesn't have any red ink so I had to hand color these hearts in. Take note of the streaks left by the dying printer... A sort of last words if you may.

For this garland, I just hand cut the letters and taped them to a piece of rope. I taped the letters to the stove because they kept flipping. You can't tell though, right?

When I was cutting out these little hearts, I definitely started to miss elementary school and making handmade valentines for everyone!

Have a lovely week everyone! And happy (EARLY) Valentine's Day!

9:06 PM
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DIY Salvation Army Painting Upcyle

Canvas

Salvation Army sells some gorgeous (and some ugly) works of art. Many of them are on canvases and we all know how expensive canvases can be. Especially large ones. A few years back, I gave my mom a painting that I'd picked up for around $4.

It's sat behind a curtain in my craft room since then. I guess this is where I publically call out my mother for not appreciating my gifts. (Sorry, Mom!)
But anyways, I pulled out (and dusted off) this old canvas and decided it was perfect for a bit of regifting. For some reason I loved the original picture and was a bit sad to paint over it.
I apologize for the grainy, dark pictures. I took these at night and the lighting in the room is terrrrible. Maybe I should have given her new lights instead?

Anyways, I was inspired by these canvases that are similar.

I didn't get any in progress photos except for this one. It gives you an idea of what the painting looked like before. I just printed out the letters and cut them out with an exacto knife and taped them down. Yes, I should have used wax paper to prevent the paint from bleeding through. Whoops it's too late now!

As you can tell, my lettering is obviously crooked and very messy but it's not THAT obvious from a distance so I just let it slide.

My one annoyance regarding this work is the fact that the letters in the bottom corner are really dark! UGH

As you can still tell, I obviously didn't put very much paint on it but I liked how the flowers shone through and the background design.
and perhaps I was running out of red paint shhh.

I gave this to my mom for Christmas and she actually hung it up in her bedroom! I was very proud of my regifting success. Did I mention I have a serious regifting problem? NEVER give me anything that you're positive I won't keep because I may accidently give it back to you!

Speaking of my downfalls: canvases. I have an addiction to them. It's a good thing they're so expensive or else I'd have probably hundreds of them. I seriously love making art on canvases but I have nothing to do with all of it so I have to stop myself!

So if you're looking for a gift to give me, I strongly suggest either canvases, more paint, or chocolate. You can't go wrong with any of those ;)

9:11 PM
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A little bit of snow and a Christmas recap

Photos

A little bit of snow can't keep us inside! Unless of course it comes accompanied with a power outage and we can't get the car out of the garage. Christmas was VERY interesting this year... actually it was not interesting at all. It was rather dark and cold!

For 5 days we were without power and finally got it back on the evening of Christmas day! Thankfully we have a wood burning stove (but no generator!) so we didn't completely freeze but we did have to go without water and electricity for a bit there. In addition to having no power, a tree had fallen across our dead end street so everyone was stuck! On Christmas morning, we opened our presents by candlelight which will be something I hope I can laugh about in a few years in an non sarcastic and bitter manner.

Anyways, here's this year's Christmas card picture!

And here's how deep the snow was after the recent "snowmeggadon" or whatever everyone was calling it! See that rocking bench in the background? It's almost entirely covered!

Here's a before picture of the dogs. After all the snow fell, they could barely make it out to sit on their favorite spot of the hill overlooking our pond and the rest of the yard.