Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Insert Macklemore Pun Here

So this post is about some thrift shop art I revamped, so I'll let you come up with your own Macklemore-related punny title for this post. I've been only mildly inconsistent on the blogging front, but I remembered that I never shared a super fast, easy, cheap art project I tackled this past summer.  You may remember from this post that we made off with a major haul of thrifted frames, etc., a while back.  One of those suckers finally made it's way into a DIY-ed art project.  To refresh your memory, we started with this guy:


Obviously, this guy as-is is U-G-L-Y.  But I thought the frame was a unique shape and had potential. So I decided to just replace the ugly needlework fabric (which was wrapped around a backing inside the frame, with some much more appealing fabric and voila!


Fun fact, I had my eye on this fabric at Hobby Lobby for months.. there was a roll of it in the clearance section (that I always troll everytime I go there), but given it is nice, sturdy upholstery fabric and there was a sizable chunk of it, it was still over $20 on clearance.  So I waited and finally it got marked down even more and so I finally snatched it up! Good things Cheap fabric comes to those who wait...

Anywho, as it stands alone I actually kind of liked the frame as -is, with the vintage-y wood quality, and thought the whole thing just screamed 1970's (which most people hate, but I happen to loooooovelovelovelove), but when I hung it on the wall, the brown wood just did not jive with our chocolate milk colored walls. .


So, like many things in our house these days, it got a good-old-fashioned spray painting.


The white frame just works better, I think, especially given most frames in our house are white these days.  I love how the blue and red stripes in the chevron pattern pick up the colors of the living room as you walk in.  Perfection! And to maintain a bit of the worn/vintage quality I liked about it before painting it, I used some sandpaper to lightly scratch up some of the paint.

  

This project cost me less than $10, as the frame was likely around $2 at a thrift store, and the fabric was around $12-15, I believe, but of course I only used a little bit of it for this project so that will last me a few projects to come. Hooray for being cheap thrifty!