A Pintrest Vacation

This year I had planned a week off in July but then Steve got a new job so he couldn't join me.  So instead of cancelling my vacation, I decided to spend my week doing some Pintrest projects I had planned on doing for some time!  I was so excited!  I visited a local thrift shop and picked up some goodies to help me out and then hit up Home Depot to buy loads of spray paint (caution:  buying spray paint may lead to finding items all over the house you can paint!).

My first project was a rusty old rake that I removed the handle off of, spray painted, and hung upside down in my closet to act as a necklace/scarf/belt rack. Cost = $2 for the rake and the medallion was from my scrapbook stash. Next project was my cake stand which was a candle stick, platter, and string of beads all glued together and then spray painted ... cute non? Cost = $4 for the patter, candle stick and beads. After that was my key rack! An old frame I spray painted with scrapbook paper behind it and some hooks screwed in and it now hangs in my laundry room. Cost = $1.50 for frame and hooks, the paper I already had in my stash.

And as I cautioned above, once I started spray painting I couldn't stop.  My scrapbook room had a tiered basket system that was black and an old gum ball machine that was green that now co-ordinate beautifully!  These two projects cost me nothing as I already had the spray paint.

And finally, the piece de resistance ... my gallery wall.  I have wanted to do this for years and finally found the time needed to do it.  I bought a whole bunch of mix and matched frames at the thrift store and then spray painted one of three colours (off white, blue, and yellow).  I backed some of the frames with a favorite scrapbook paper collection from Echo Park.  It was so much fun picking which photos I wanted to use and where to place them (I still have one frame to fill cause they printed the photo in the wrong orientation).  You will notice a couple of frames have different items it.  One has our family initial, another our first house key, and another with our lucky number.  I also used two frames to try and disguise the thermostat and doorbell!  So far everyone who has seen it loves it and I can't wait to start switching out photos when some new ones come along.  This project cost me about $74 for all the frames, scrapbook paper, and photos. Not bad if I do say so myself.

So all in all I spent $108.57 on all my projects and the spray paint to do them.  Not bad really!  Originally I priced out the gallery wall using all Ikea frames it was going to cast almost $300!  So I figured I saved myself almost $200, got to do several more projects because of my thriftiness and also got to have a lot of fun!  I am already trying find a way to take another week off work so that I can do some more projects!