DIY Photo Clipboards

 I hope your week is going well so far! I've been having the best time in my craft room the past couple of days working on some small projects for our home. 

Love Grows Wild

The one I'm sharing today is a tutorial for making my version of some DIY photo clipboards inspired by Liz at Love Grows Wild. I featured Liz's clipboards last August on Friday Finds and thought they might be just the thing for a long narrow wall space above my family room sofa.

My Television Console

 I changed the finish on my version of these clipboards to fit the vintage feel of our family room and tie in with this white chalk painted media stand with a dark walnut stained top that's on the opposite wall. I've been wanting to display photographs of the beloved furry members of our family for the longest time, and I think my informal distressed clipboards are just right for some lighthearted four legged artwork. 

Following Liz's tutorial, I started with a 1" x 12" x 6' pine board. I cut the length into five 13" pieces to make five clipboards. After sanding, I applied a coat of dark walnut stain and let it dry overnight.

  

The next day I applied two coats of homemade chalk paint. When the paint was dry I used coarse sandpaper to distress just down to the dark walnut stain. After sanding the boards once more with fine sandpaper I applied a coat of clear furniture wax for protection. 

  

I didn't like the way sawtooth hangers made the clipboards stand out from the wall, so I improvised my own hangers by wrapping some floral wire around two small nails. I measured each hanger carefully to make them all the same.  Taking the time to do that made it much easier to hang all the clipboards level with each other on the wall. 

 

I hot glued squares of cardboard over the nails so they wouldn't scratch the walls. 

 

For clips I found these cute miniature clothespins in the craft section at Fred Meyer. I dropped them into some dark walnut stain and then drained them on a rag and wiped them off.

 

I used a piece of 8"x 10" scrap paper to figure out where I wanted the clothes pins to hold each photo, marked the spot on the board with a pencil line, and then used a thin line of hot glue to apply each one.

 I probably should have used wood glue for that step, but I was impatient and didn't want to wait for it to dry. So far, so good, though. The hot glue is holding the clothespins just fine. 

I think it took me as long to find and prepare my photographs as it did to prepare the wood. I edited and re-sized each photo to 8" x 10" using Photoshop. If you don't have photo editing software on your computer, I highly recommend PicMonkey. 

 

At this point, my printer ran out of ink. Grrrr...  When my sweet husband brought me some home that night, I printed out my photos. 

 

I trimmed the photos on my paper cutter, but scissors will work great too. The last step was the easiest: clipping the photos onto each clipboard.

 

And here they are! Our little ragamuffins! 

 

Our family room has a high bank of windows on one wall. We love the view of the trees, but they only leave a narrow strip of wall above the sofa on which to hang artwork. 

 

I think our new photo clipboards fit here perfectly. 

 

Every time I walk into the room and see our furry family members looking at me, they make me smile. Each photograph captures their unique personalities; Tucker, my black lab, is smart and he's always watching me attentively to see where I'm going and what I'm doing. It's hard to see here, but there's a big grin behind that lolling tongue. Molly, a golden lab and my oldest grand dog, is loving and gentle. Jake, the West Highland Terrier and my youngest grand dog, is always looking for trouble. He's so darn cute, though, he melts our hearts, and no one can stay annoyed with him for long. 

 Our pets enrich our lives so much. They really are family members, and we're happy to give them a place on the wall. And in case you're wondering, my daughters' photographs are hanging on another wall in our family room. I haven't forgotten the humans!

I'd love to know if you display photographs of your cherished pets around your home too.

Thanks so much for coming by today, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your week! 

 

{Check out my Spring and Winter clipboards, too!}

Let's Party!

From My Front Porch To Yours 

Elizabeth & Co. 

Beyond The Picket Fence 

Rooted In Thyme 

My Repurposed Life

It All Started With Paint 

Cozy Little House 

Jennifer Rizzo

Knick of Time 

 

 

 

A Statement Chair for the Family Room

When One Kings Lane recently asked me to help them introduce their Home Décor Resource Guide by writing about a statement chair from my home that reflects my personal style, I jumped up and down at the opportunity. If you’re not familiar with them, One King’s Lane is a website that sells gorgeous top-brand, vintage, and designer items. It’s an understatement to say I was flattered and thrilled to be approached by them.

To be honest with you, though, I didn’t really know what a statement chair was. I’d just given my two living room wing chairs to my daughter and wasn’t sure I even owned a statement chair.  

Whenever in doubt, I always search for information. I simply went to the One Kings Lane Home Décor Resource and typed “statement chair” in the search box. Up came an article about how to incorporate statement furniture into any room, and in a few minutes I knew all about statement chairs. 

According to the article:

The purpose of a statement chair is fairly self-explanatory: it makes a statement. It has the power to draw attention to a particular room or nook, define a space, or add a pop of color, pattern, or the unexpected. They’re mobile and functional ways to express your aesthetic. Whether you have a contemporary dining room, a traditional bedroom, or a sleekly modern living room, you can breathe new life into the space (and the rest of your furniture) with one seriously unique chair.

As I read that description, I realized I was literally at that moment sitting in my family room in the perfect example of a statement chair. After we finished our kitchen remodel just before Thanksgiving, the very day after the plastic came down in fact, we had a new leather sectional delivered to replace the old saggy one in our family room. We loved the size, shape, color, and comfort of our new sectional, but it didn’t illustrate what we wanted to convey with our decor.  

We still needed a new armchair for that space, and I now realize that as we shopped for it, we were looking for a statement chair, a chair that would clearly define the vibe in the room as vintage. It had to be a strong statement because it was just one chair competing with a huge sectional. We saw many plain armchairs that were the right color and size and were comfortable, but the one we finally chose from a local merchant has more than that; it has a unique shape and fabric pattern that makes a very clear statement. It defines our family room as vintage, fun, and a bit funky. 

A cool thing about having a relatively inexpensive statement chair is that when we want to change the vibe of our family room, we can just recover this chair or find a new statement chair that reflects whatever our new vibe is perfectly. We won’t have to buy a whole new expensive sectional. We can just change our chair. 

 Smart!

For lots more smart ideas check out the One Kings Lane Home Décor Resource Guide and bookmark it for future reference. You’ll be amazed at the wealth of information there, from a Home Decor Shopping Handbook to The History of Chairs; it’s a great decorating resource.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and taking a look at our new statement chair. I have a few more projects left to do in our family room and then I hope to share the rest of it with you soon.

I hope you have a great week!

(I wasn't compensated in any way for this post, and all my opinions are my own.)

It's a great day to party!

Mod Vintage Life
Our Home Away From Home 

Cozy Little House
Common Ground
From My Front Porch To Yours
The Vintage Farmhouse 

 

New Snow!

New snow today in Boise!

Friday Finds

I managed to get my Christmas decorations packed up today, so this afternoon I'm treating myself to some Friday Finds.

  But first, here's a great ornament storage tip: hot glue some clear plastic cups to cardboard and stack them up in a box. I don't wrap my glass ornaments in paper anymore and haven't broken one in years. You can hold the cardboard in one hand and put the ornaments right into the cups as you take them off the tree with your other hand. Super fast. Plus, when you decorate your tree, it's easy to see and find the ornaments you want, and you can put them on the same way. No more bending over the box to pick up each ornament one by one until your back is screaming, "Where's that rum for my eggnog?!" 

Today, for Friday Finds I'm sharing some inspiration for our projects we have planned for around the house in 2014.

Hidden Pond Kinnebunkport

 The project I'm finding the most challenging so far is redecorating our living room. Almost everything needs to be replaced, and all I know for sure is that I want a warm neutral pallet like in this cozy Maine guest cottage. 

Cedar Hill Farmhouse

 The project I'm finding the next most challenging is our master bedroom. It hasn't been touched in years. The walls are still red! We want the living room, dining room, and master bedroom to flow well together, so neutrals for all with slightly different paint colors in each. We'll also be ripping up our bedroom carpet and refinishing the original hardwood floors that still have linoleum on them. Yes, in 1910, linoleum was all the rage, even in bedrooms. (Oh, and by the way, I'm pretty sure our entire master bedroom would fit inside Anita's gorgeous bed. Okay, maybe a little exaggeration, but it is small.) 

Hvitur Lakkris

 Next up is our master bathroom. That one will be easier because we'll be handing the work over to the same fabulous contractor who did our kitchen. Did you snicker over the red bedroom? Well, have a good laugh now because our bathroom is still hunter green! The challenge will be to choose neutral surfaces that will pass our "would it have been seen in this house one hundred years ago" test. Timeless is what we're aiming for.  

Down to Earth Style

 In the other end of the house we'll hopefully get to replacing our old sheet vinyl floors in the family room with wood. We're stuck on the fence (paralyzed, really) between the authenticity and mess of sanding real wood floors or the convenience, but not quite the look we really want, of manufactured hardwood floors. Tough decision!

The Vintage Farmhouse

 Smaller projects on my mind right now are how to replace the storage from the bottom of the dining room hutch where our new kitchen bar is now.  There's no more room in the dining room, so it will have to be incorporated into the living room as either built-ins or a new large piece of furniture.

Daisymaebelle

 I have some furniture to paint this year. There's always furniture to paint!

Bliss Ranch

 As much as I adore my little antique dining room light fixture that was original to our kitchen, it just doesn't give enough light, nor the right kind of light, for our dining room. You know how I love chicken wire, so I'd be a happy camper with Bliss' fabulous chandelier, and I also like the carriage lamp look that's popular now. I feel like the dining room light is one place I can do something fun and trendy if I want to.

So those are a few things that caught my eye today when I went hunting on my Pinterest Boards for some Friday Finds with my next projects in mind. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

I hope everyone has a really terrific weekend and a very

HAPPY FRIDAY!