She Will Finally Hang Some Art

This last weekend served as a reminder to how lucky I am to have a husband who is my partner in every sense of the word.  Not only is Matt an excellent husband and father, but he is my best friend.  He indulges my crazy decorating ideas/suggestions and more often than not, helps me put it all together.  For example, when I suggested upholstering our own headboard, Matt got really into the idea and not only helped me with execution, but was responsible for a lot of the finishing details including staining the 2x4s that hold the actual headboard up.  The reason I felt the need to give a shout out to my number one guy is because during the past weekend, I had people ask how I have time to do everything with two kids.  I am by no means Wonder Woman, as there are many ladies out there who have just as many, if not more, kids and are way more involved in word, community, school, etc.  I do know that I would not be able to do even half of the things I do without the support of Matt.  A good partner makes everything so much easier.  We laugh and cry over all of our triumphs and tribulations together.  There are definitely nights when we are totally exhausted and we don't do anything but lay on the couch together, but there are other nights when we put the kids to bed, one of us runs out for a DQ blizzard, and then we get started on a fun house project.  I hope everyone gets the chance to be as lucky as me and spend the rest of their life with their best friend, living an unbelievably happy life!

Alright, on to more exciting stuff...bedroom art!  Shortly after we moved into our home, Matt and I bought new bedding for our master bedroom.  The bedding is predominantly brown with nature accents in blue, green, white, and beige.  We have quite a bit of wall space and started looking for art to hang on the walls that would fit in with the nature theme of the bedding.  Something 3D or with more texture appealed to us and our aesthetic.  While we were out at Pier 1, we saw a large piece of art made with wood and nails.  The body of the art piece was wood, painted red, and then a decorative design was installed on the wood with nails.  The effect was really cool and to me, looked pretty easy to replicate. 

Matt can cut wood and nail pieces together, but I was worried it would take too long for him to put together and that it would be too difficult for me to nail or lug around.  Michaels was having a sale on their canvases that week, so I bought some larger canvases and headed over to Lowes to pick up a small sample can of green paint and several packages of bronze furniture tacks.  I actually bought all of the packages of bronze furniture tacks.  I'm sure I screwed up their ordering for several weeks since I had to keep going back to buy the packages! 

Once at home, I painted the canvases, including the sides, in green.  While the canvases were drying, I started sketching out some leaf designs.  I knew I wanted to create a leaf design to go with the nature patterns that show up on our comforter.  One day I will show you a picture of our comforter, along with the headboard Matt created, and this will all make sense! 

After the paint dried, I just started pushing the tacks in.  It was a little scary because the tacks definitely leave noticeable holes and I didn't want to have too many oops holes, but all in all, it went pretty quickly.  At the end we decided to hammer in furniture tacks around the perimeter and I think it really gave the art a more finished look.  I'm really sorry I don't have more pictures of each stage, but we started the project when we had our old camera and since then have replaced not only the camera, but also the laptop.  In order to access those old pics, I would need to search through our external hard drive.  Not exactly a fun time! 

Below are some close ups of the two pieces I did finish.

Not too bad and all in all, a pretty easy project!  Furniture tacks come in a couple of different finishes, so this project can be so easily customized to fit your art needs.  If you had a daughter with a princess-themed bedroom, you could use a brighter shade on the canvas and use silver tacks to create a crown shape.  Honestly, the possibilities are limitless. 

We only have two pieces complete right now, but I do think the wall would look better with three in a row or 4 in a square/rectangle layout.  I'm hoping to post some more pics later this week on the whole master bedroom, so I'll probably ask for some feedback then.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Lori