Homey Oh My

Hey guys!  So this post is pretty impromptu, meaning I for real had no initial plans on sharing this on the blog.  It only really worked out because I do this thing where I will take “before and after” photos with my camera of little things I work on here and there just for my own fun.  What, no one else does that??

I’ll give you more of the story.  If you’ve been following along recently, then you know that I’m working on putting up an art gallery around my TV, which is taking forever.  I’ve been mostly frustrated over constantly changing my mind about everything, but even more frustrating is a problem I don’t think I’ve ever realized before, and that is this- photo mats covering up too much of the art.  Does that bug anyone else?

I want to see every single centimeter of the art print I worked so hard at picking out (humor me) and get the biggest bang for my buck, you know what I mean?  So after quickly learning that there isn’t a large variety of stock mat sizes, and that I’m not about to give up yet and go get custom framing done, I set out to customize the sizes of the mats in my frames.

So I took out my camera, snapped a “before” shot of my print in the frame, did my crafty thing with cutting the photo mat to the right size, then took an “after” photo to prove to myself that this was a good idea.  And this is what I found:

Major difference, right?  Would you agree with me that the “after” frame is more badass?

After this epiphany, I decided yes, I want to share this with anyone who feels as passionately as I do about seeing ALL of the art.  So as I went ahead to do this again with another photo mat, I had my camera ready to photograph the process.  Yay!  I barely escaped a blogger fail this time.

The process is very simple and very straightforward.  Not a ton to show, but here’s what I did.

Using a ruler, I measured out how big I wanted the mat opening to be.  I get that it’s easier to frame a print if the mat opening is smaller than the printed area of the art, but I measured my opening pretty much to the exact size of my art print, maybe a couple millimeters smaller on each edge (I’m serious about this business!).  I bolded this outline in gray above, which I drew in pencil on the back side of the mat.

With a rotary cutter, I cut down the lines using a ruler as a guide for straight cutting.  I did this on top of a cutting mat by the way, which I’m pretending to do in the photo above.  This cutter is amazing, and I only regret that I didn’t get one sooner as I think about all those times this thing could have made my life easier.  It’s for sure my favorite craft tool right now.

Thing is, cutting corners is tricky with a rotary cutter since it’s hard to decipher how far you have to roll it, so I cut as far along the line as I could, then finished the corners with an X-Acto knife and ruler.

Here’s the before and after for the second mat I cut.

The difference is more subtle with this one, but still absolutely necessary in my world.  You see how there’s that extra bit of pink that’s more visible on the right side now?  Worth it.

I do agree before and afters are more exciting the more dramatic they are though, so here’s that original one again.

Wabam!  Huge.

I’m slowly but surely framing and cutting away at more prints, and still making some more decisions about what I’m doing, because I don’t know anymore.  Sounds promising, I know.  This post is a bit of an update on the wall, though!  Do you like these prints?  I’m sure of them being a part of the gallery because I’ve had my eye on them for so long and LOVE them.  If you were wondering on the sources, you can find the Wild Stripes print here and the Navy Geo print here.

It’s here, guys- my first, fall decor DIY of this year!  It’s also another very easy, very simple copper tape craft.  After completing my previous copper art project, I needed to dive deeper into this new world of copper tape.  I was itching to do something else with the stuff, but was wishing the tape was thinner, so in came this guy.

This 1/4″ copper tape is fantastic.  It isn’t as delicate as the one I used for my wall art, and I like that the thinner size allows for creating more intricate designs, although I still kept it pretty darn simple this time around, too.

All I did was wrap horizontal rings of copper tape around my glass candle holders, smoothing my finger over the tape while removing the backing at the same time.  It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world trying to keep the tape straight and make sure the ends matched perfectly, and I didn’t fully succeed at this either, but to that I say, “It’s all good.”  I went slowly and did the best I could *pat on the back*.

Why am I wearing gloves?  I had mentioned with my copper wall art that I didn’t realize I was making fingerprints on the tape and wished I had worn gloves, so I wore them this time around.  This tape is a lot sturdier and much more fingerprint resistant though, which is awesome, but I still wanted to take the precaution of not leaving behind more finger grease than was necessary.

I started the copper stripes off closer together at the base and then spread them further apart towards the top.  I thought this would be a unique but still minor variation on a regular stripes pattern that would keep the design very simple and modern.

These birchwood slices were a score last Spring at Michaels when they were on clearance for $1 each, which was the right price for me to be convinced that I should hoard them until fall.  I think that was a good decision, wouldn’t you agree??  They worked out so perfectly for my candle holders to sit on!

That white pitcher made appearances on this blog last year, and after seeing Emily Henderson recently use it in one of her designed spaces, I’m more than convinced to bring mine back out again this year.  I’ll spare you my Emily Henderson adoration-rant this time.

Those greens in the pitcher complement the copper SO beautifully, don’t you think?  They’re called Snow on the Mountain.  Yea.  Cute.  I’m thinking copper and green will be my go to colors this fall, which is so appropriate given that they’re two of my favorite colors ever.

You will probably be seeing more of this tape on the blog.  If not, then forgot that I said that, but seriously, probably.

Before we get started, I need to say THANK YOU for all the sweet comments you guys left on my blog birthday post!!  It’s been amazing reading through them and knowing how much you guys are enjoying being here, which makes my heart soar.  I wanted to go through and respond to each comment, but then realized that would clutter up the “entry” aspect, so decided against it, but hopefully all of you are reading this and know how overwhelmed with gratitude I am for all your love!  That post is going down in my book as my favorite, because reading through the comments will be my go-to pick-me-up forever.  You guys are the best!!!!!!!!

Ok, blah blah blah, I’ll get on with it.

Wall art project number two!  Although I will say, I’m really liking the way it looks here in this corner, so much that my original plan to have it go on my future gallery wall is probably not happening anymore.  So while this isn’t going towards project gallery wall, I still feel the need to to share with you how crazy easy it is to make this chic copper art.

The inspiration, very simply, came from wanting to use this copper tape.

It’s been hiding in my closet for almost a year now, which is what happens with most things I get without knowing at all what I want to do with them.  I always trusted the idea for this tape would hit me eventually, and in this case it took me a year, ha!

I traced the frame insert onto poster board, then cut it out to act as the canvas.  For the copper tape, I peeled of the backing just on the end of the tape and wrapped it over the edge of the poster board.  While peeling off the rest of the backing, I slid my hand over the copper tape to stick it onto the poster board diagonally like so.  I repeated this all around in a radial design, making sure each strip of copper tape intersected at the same point.

Easy, right?

A couple notes on using copper tape:

• Wear gloves.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but my fingers were making fingerprints on the tape, which are visible at certain angles, but still I would have rather avoided this.
• The tape is very delicate, making it impossible to preserve the perfect sheen it has while on the roll, so it ends up having the look of copper leaf, which I like!  If you are looking for even texture though, copper tape will not achieve that.

I was thinking about the Japanese sun when I was creating this, and when I showed it to my boyfriend he said hey it’s like the Japanese sun.  I guess it’s an abstract, copper take on that!

How soon-to-be-fall appropriate, too.  Seems like I’ve favored copper a lot this year and I see myself using a lot more of it this fall.

More wall art to come, guys.  This gallery wall is taking a lot longer than I wanted, but I’d rather have it that way if it means it will turn out just the way I want it to.  Do I even know anymore what I want it to turn out like??  I’m feeling more and more antsy to get it done, but I know that rushing these kinds of things is exactly what not to do.  Then again, sometimes you have to put a cold hard deadline on something or else you’ll spend forever trying to perfect it, right?