I hope you had a great holiday weekend! We sure did! Jack had a great time in Chicago {even got a
a 'Happy Birthday' message on the Cubs Jumbotron!} and we enjoyed celebrating his13th years.
 At sunset last night we roasted smores around a campfire Robert built by the creek. It was a great
 end to a special weekend!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found a fun project on Pinterest that explained how to transfer newsprint to fingernails
and Maris 'lover of any and all crazy nail art' was totally on board.     

   

Let me start by saying that she is not the best at painting her own nails {love you, Mare! } So, this little
 project could/would probably look a lot better if you try this yourself. Anyhoo...paint your nails with a
 beige or neutral color and them dry completely. 

Pour a small amount of rubbing alcohol into a bowl and dip one finger in.   



Take a small piece of newspaper and place it, print side down, on the nail and put pressure on it
{without  sliding the newsprint around} making sure that the whole nail gets covered. 



Keep applying pressure until the type is no longer visible {this means it has transfered to the nail!}
 


Then coat it with a clear topcoat. The newsprint gets on your skin as well as your nails, but, it
washes off easily. Just make sure that you topcoat it with the clearcoat before you wash
it off of your fingers because you will also wash it off of your nails! 



Cute, right?!



This is the original version {thanks to Nailed-it via pinterest}

This adorable chair was a birthday present for Max who was turning 1.  Anna and her other son
 Harry {Absolutely Beautiful Things} combined their artistic talents and created this unique present
using fabric felt markers. Anna found the small vintage chair and had it upholstered in white canvas.
 She included a special note on the back along with the date. I think this is one of the most special
gifts I have ever seen. 

I bought a white canvas club chair for my daughters room years ago. The sole reason behind the
purchase was to do the exact same thing that Anna has done. But, I wanted to include everything
from her {then} 11 years of life.....that's a lot of events! Then with every passing year, more great
events were happening {funny how life does that...}

Maybe I will consider having it completed by the time she graduates from high school in 2 years :)   

To see more about this chair, visit Anna's blog. It is a real treat. 

I love fabrics. Textiles get me incredibly excited. And although it has shown its bright floral
loveliness all over blogland, Schumachers Chiang Mai Dragon, is one I never ever tire of.


{mylittleapartment}

It looks beautiful on everything it covers...on chairs


{livinglivelier}

on headboards


{littlegreennotebook}

on seats


{saragilbaneinteriors}

and even on envelopes


{cococozy}

But, my very favorite application was introduced to me last week on Janell's blog....get ready...


{gorgeousshinythings} 

That is NOT wallpaper. That, my friends, is painted by hand!! I know..a-maze-ing!!! This is
the creative work of Danika Herrick 

 

I felt an instant kinship. After all, I too just painted my own Schumacher wall: 




So cheers to you, Danika, my Schumacher sista! I can't wait to see it all finished! Check out her
 wonderful blog here.

In yesterday's post, I showed you a bedroom I just finished.

 
 
There were quite a few steps that led up to the wall full of artwork. Almost all of the PBN's {paint by
numbers} were purchased on ebay and etsy. Surprisingly, I only found 1 or 2 in an antique store
{and I go to a lot of antique stores}. I had a few 'rules' which I tried to adhere to: only buy framed
pieces, don't spend more than $25/pc, and the theme of each painting needed to relate to the
 mountains. All in all, these were fairly easy rules to follow.    

At first, I was going to white-wash all the frames. But after experimenting with one, I didn't like it 
with the wall paint. Because the frames arrived in everything from deep cherry to white, I wanted 
them to all have a more medium wood tone. I wanted the variety of different tones, but as they
 were--it was a bit too distracting with all the colors in the canvas.

So, on the lightest ones, I rubbed on several layers of Tudor Brown Briwax. While the 'orangey oak'
frames got  painted with watered down brown paint.      



This was a series of 4. They arrived like this.



After a little paint, they ended up like this.

Then came the task of planning where to hang what. I made a paper template of every picture. I used
what I had: kraft paper, black sign paper, and newspaper. I made sure to write a brief description of 
the artwork on each template {otherwise there was no doubt that I would get something mixed up!} 



With painters tape, I began placing them on the wall. Fingers were crossed that I had enough to fill
 the space tightly. After I had a configuration on the wall that I liked, I wanted to lay the real prints
 out on the floor, in this pattern, just to make sure that they looked good. 



The floor in another room had the space to do this. I liked how it looked and then began taking one
print at a time to hang. I literally felt like I was in the 'puzzle round' of Survivor--finding the description
and shape on the template, going back into the other room to find the correct one and then
 bringing it back to match it to it's correct location.     



Most of the hardware on the back of these needed to be reinforced. After all, they are all 50-60
 years old! And many needed some extra nails or painters tape to hold the edges of the canvases down. 






I had a couple of round frames I wanted to use on the window trim. I opted to leave them 'as is' in their 
chippy mellowed gold frames. I like the way the color tied into the dull brass on the wall sconces.  



Because I didn't have any extra small PBN's, I cheated...I went on ebay and found some
images of PBN's that I liked. I printed them off and cut them out to fit my frames.


Sshhh...don't tell anyone ;)

I love all the history that this wall now possesses. Think of all the many, many people that had
a hand--literally--in bringing this wall to fruition! Some are signed, some are dated, while
 others share the the city where the artist lived. They really are beautiful little pieces of
americana and in my opinion, priced far below the time that took to create them.