It’s beginning to look a lot like…

we’ve had enough snow days for me to start decorating for holidays I’ve never decorated for before. :) We’re going on snow day number four after a week and a half Christmas break. I’m soooo loving it! Cole and Audrey absolutely love being crafty and right in the middle of whatever I’m attempting, so we had lots of fun tonight. I hope you like what we came up with.

I started with two frames from the Dollar Tree. They are super ornate and I new I’d like them if I made them a little more shabby chic. The corners feel like they are metal even. I took profile pictures of both of the kiddos and first attempted to cut them out of red paper (to be super color-coordinated for Valentine’s Day)—big mistake! It looked ridiculous! The silhouettes ended up being too big, so I scanned them and converted them to .svg files and was able to reduce the size and use my Cricut Expression to cut out the new ones. (Thanks, honey for the super thoughtful Christmas gift!)

We took out the glass and paper and had to start our frame painting inside. If it would have been warmer, we could have attempted to spray paint in the garage, but the temps are in the single digits and we weren’t sure if the frames would ever dry or if the paint would freeze up and do weird things.

Cole used a brush to paint the frames and I used a foam brush to get in the grooves of the corner pieces.

Audrey didn’t get to help on this project, but she had fun rocking in the rocking chair John’s grandpa made for him when he was a little boy. She also got to watercolor paint which is much easier to clean than acrylic.

Here’s our finished product! Please don’t look too closely because there’s a fingerprint on the glass and our painting is, let’s just say, less than perfect. I used distressing ink to cover the corners for a little extra dimension and vintage look.

Here are the frames on top of our bookcase in the living room. I bought the glittery branches in the Christmas section at Hobby Lobby for 49 cents each this afternoon. I may add a few hearts to them. I also got the ornament in front of the large frame at HL for 29 cents. It’s a Christmas ornament, but I added a bow to it and it looks decorative enough for Valentine’s Day. I added a valentine (from one of the printable links I added earlier) to the inside of the large frame.

The candleholder and the holder the branches are in were all Dollar Tree items that I glued together with Gorilla Glue. I was inspired by Homebody Holly’s creations here. John gave me the two old red books for color and depth. :) Isn’t it sweet of him to loan me books to decorate with? He also gave me a big can of vintage buttons I’m going to have to do something with soon.

Tomorrow, we are going to work on making a 'love'ly banner.