Magnet Board for Tim's Office

Tada!

I haven't done much with the basement lately, but for Valentine's Day I wanted to give Tim the magnetic board I had been planning for his office.  I knew it would be fairly easy to make because I had done the same thing for the kids' room in our old house.  I got the idea from Teachpreschool.org.  I simplified it a bit for Tim's office, I didn't paint it and I simply screwed it into the wall instead of using velcro tape.  Using an oil drip pan is an affordable way to get an extra large magnet board, I think this one was around $13 at Walmart.  I also wanted some magnetic storage.  I had seen some cool options at The Container Store:





But spending $10-$15 for each piece seemed unnecessary.  I knew I could do something similar for a lot cheaper.  So I headed to my local Goodwill and grabbed a few inexpensive containers.

I paid $1.50 for all three containers.  Then I pulled out a can of spray paint I had left over from spray painting our patio furniture last year.  I gave everything a couple of coats of blue paint.

I then hot glued some magnets that I've had for at least 10 years to the back of each container.  I purchased them and then never used them.  I count the magnets and spray paint as free, since their cost has already been accounted for in a different project.  The long, low container fell off the magnet board as soon as Tim put something in it, the paint and magnets just peeled right off of the plastic back.  I scraped more paint off of the back and then re-glued the magnets on.  This time it worked, but it isn't shown in the picture because I hadn't fixed it at that point.  I also made some magnets using pictures I had printed off of the internet.  I used my button maker and simply glued a magnet on the back of each button instead of attaching a pin.

I'm pleased with how this has turned out and hope Tim gets a lot of use out of it!

Quick and Easy Window Shade Update

Sofia has a pair of very old window shades in her bedroom.  They work, mostly, so I didn't want to get rid of them and spend more money on new ones.  They are, however, a little messed up.  Both had small holes in them and one was ripping.

So I used packing tape to fix the tear from behind and then glued some old and free rick-rack using Tacky glue.

You can see that I just ran a line of glue across the front of the shade and stuck the rick-rack to it.  I then trimmed off the ends.

I had to pull the shades out so that the rick-rack wouldn't slide off while the glue was still wet.  Once they were completely dried I was all done.  Easy-peasey!

Close up

DIY Easy Art

I've been wanting to make something to take up some wall space in my living room for a while.  There is a nipple (that's the best way I can think of to describe it) for hanging something on the wall.  Instead of taking it out and patching the hole before painting, I just left it.  Bad decision.  It is too high up on the wall for a normal sized picture to fill the space well.  I made this "art" to try and fill the space, but I think that even its large size doesn't make up for its overly-high placement.

I'm sure you've seen this done before.  So did I!  That's why I made it.  I like the look of the quotation art that's on everyone else's wall and I wanted some too!  Now that I have it, I'm not so sure it was the right way to go.  A small quotation piece looks cute along with a variety of other art all hung together.  A ginormous quotation piece just looks like it's missing something.  Oh well, here it is anyway:

Here's how I did it.  I started with this large painting (I use that term loosely, it is printed on a thin board) that I got at a church rummage sale for $3.

The frame was pretty awful, so I started with that.  First I cleaned it, and the entire picture, with wet rags.

Then I primed the frame.

Then I painted a couple of coats of dark grey on the frame, an improvement from the weird gold marbleized pattern that had been there originally.

Next I chose my fonts and cut my REM quote out of contact paper.  Some bad choices were made here, as well.  First of all, my quote is so long that I had to use a smaller font to fit it all.  I think it would have looked nicer with more of the painting showing through, so a shorter quote with larger font would have looked better.  Also, clear contact paper was not the best idea.  Try placing your quote on a picture when you can't see the letter you are placing clearly, let alone the ones you've already stuck to the picture!  Anyway, that's how I did it but I suggest you not follow my example!  Here's the mess that was left over after cutting all the letters out:

I then used painters tape to hopefully keep the lines even and level.

I placed the letters (which still had their backing on so you can see them) in order to get a feeling on how well they fit.  Then I went on to the painful process of trying to stick my letters to the picture in a somewhat straight manner (with dubious success).  I'd show you a picture of this, but you can't see the letters so it would not look like much!  I peeled off the painters tape and covered the entire thing with two quick coats of a very light yellow I had on hand.  I was worried about how it would look when I peeled off the letters, but they were relatively un-smudged and the contact paper was very easy to remove.

I had to do some touch-up of the frame, and then finally hung it on the wall!  It's nice to have up there, but I feel like maybe I should add something to the bottom left corner.  What do you think?

Here it is again, a little wonky but finished!