DIY Home Decorating Project

We are pretty "settled" as far as getting unpacked, but we are far from having this home completed.  We have two empty rooms and plenty of open walls and spaces that need some home decorating.

Our kitchen, for example, needs a kitchen table.  We have not been able to find the right fit.  I did find the perfect set online for a decent price, but they only shipped to Arizona and California! Boo! We eat at the dining room table for now, but it will be nice to have a kitchen table for the kids to eat a quick bowl of cereal in the morning.

Our formal living room is also an empty space.  We are still debating on whether or not we will be making it a home office for Chad or putting living room furniture in there.  This house has a formal living room space, a family room space, and a game room space.  Down here, every house has a "game room".  The realtor explained that it just a place for the kids to be separate from adults.  Since we only had two sets of furniture, and they are definitely not formal style, we put our furniture in the family room and the game room.

Anyway, I was surfing Pinterest on DIY Home Decorating Projects, and I came across some canvas paintings that I absolutely LOVED.  It's funny, I told Chad that I wanted to do some paintings for our house and he looked at me like, really?  I told him yes, that I saw something on Pinterest and I wanted to try it.  He flat out told me, "I don't think I like that idea."  UGH.  I finally showed him the link and he was okay with it.

The paintings are fool proof.  You literally cannot screw them up!  They are impressionistic beach scenes.  I will post the link at the bottom of this article.

Although Courtney doesn't live with us right now, she will need a room of her own.  We also need a room for family to stay, so we have a spare bedroom that will serve as Courtney's room/guest bedroom.  The bedspread is blue and tan, so the beach scene canvases will go perfect in that room.

The first step was to pick out the canvas.  I went to Michaels and got two, two-packs of 18x24 canvases, so I could do a three-canvas spread, as the original poster did hers.

Following the directions on the link, I applied molding paste to the canvases to give the canvas texture.  Since the original poster used her pie server to apply the paste instead of spending money on a trowel, I saved myself some money and did the exact same thing.  I used my pie server to apply the molding paste, and let the canvases dry for 24 hours.

Here is a photo of the molding paste on my canvas.

The next step was to apply the paint.  This is the best part of the project - you literally cannot screw this up.  Since my scene was to start with the sand and end with the water, I started on the bottom and applied layers of browns.

Here's my fancy art palette - a paper plate.

 I will admit I had some screw ups on the way.  The best part is, that if you screw up, you just paint over it.

Here, I dropped some blue paint on my waves.  I was a little careless.

Here, I opened my white paint bottle with a little too much zest and splattered into my sand.  Oops!
 

This project was so fun.  I had a great time with my beach scene creation.  It looks really great in the bedroom, which has now been affectionately named "The Beach Room".  I love it!

 

I did not do my beach scene exactly like the original poster, but I was inspired from the picture that she posted of the water in Cancun, Mexico, where she honeymooned:

Now, to give credit where credit is due, here is a link to the original project:

http://www.myclevernest.com/2012/03/fool-proof-diy-painting.html

My little DIY art project cost less than $37, and I did it myself.  Don't you just love it?!?!?