feeling pinspired

I always have a lot of projects rolling around in my brain, sketched out in some book, pinned on pinterest, etc. and because there are so many, I have to decide which ones are necessary.

I would love to do all the projects that I think of or find, but the reality is once you finish the project, you have to have a place for it. Well, our small house doesn't allow for much "extra" without looking ultimately more cluttered than decorated; it's a fine fine line!

When we first moved into the house we had a garage sale that was a joint effort between us, my mom, Rob's mom and my aunt. At the end of the sale I collected a couple pieces that I thought I could repurpose into other things (these Christmas trees were one of the things I gained). Another was a frame with a print of three peppers, a little dated but intriguing to me, so I snagged it! 

Originally, I was going to use this frame to create a dry erase calendar for the kitchen but as I was painting, I decided that I didn't want there to be a white background as a part of the calendar and so I decided to set it aside. 

   

I did go ahead and paint the whole frame black so that I could use it for a project in the future. I switched to a different floating frame that I wasn't able to use anywhere else in the house for my calendar idea. I used the same aqua cards, pictured above, to make the date squares - the pinterest idea suggested paint chips for an ombre affect but I thought that would look too busy. Because of the frame size I went with 1.5inch x 1.75 inch rectangles and I was able to get six from each card. 

   

After placing all the cut out rectangles on the glass with rolls of scotch tape, I simply put the frame back together. I didn't add all the dates because they change every month and I didn't want to have to take apart the frame every month. Dry erase markers, which was my idea from the beginning worked out perfectly. 

   

With such clean lines it adds nicely to the kitchen without adding clutter to the walls! Last year our calendar hung on the fridge with magnets so I wanted to put it somewhere near it's old location, hence the wall next to the refrigerator. 

Project one, complete!

Once I finished the calendar, I went back to the pepper print. I still liked it and thought it was interesting, it just needed some modernization. I first used an Xacto knife to remove the green matting. 

      

Removing the matting made a great difference but the print itself still looked quite dull. I decided to try my hand at adding some contrast to the image with a black ink pen. I simply followed along all the original lines with the pen to really make the print look modern and far more updated than before. 

I think that the black outlines did wonders for the print and made it good looking enough to live in our kitchen! The corner that I placed it in was one that I was never settled on before, thinking that something was always missing. I think this nice graphic of peppers is just was the doctor decorator ordered! 

Overall, these projects cost me... NOTHING. It was a free crafting day at the Rebhan house and I was so happy to be able to not only repurpose one item, but two for our kitchen! 

Pinterest is a wonderful thing and I like it even more when I can create something that I find without having to spend one single cent! Always a win in my book. 

Thanks for following along, we are tackling some fun projects coming up so stay tuned! 

Until next time,

Lindsey