I'm pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but my bedroom in high school had a Shabby Chic theme. Since I'm doing a shabby chic living room now, I went looking through my old stuff when I was at my parents' house to see if I could reuse any of it. I found some throw pillows and my old bedding (comforter, fancy pillowcases, and green pillowcases).
The bedding is so pretty; I'm just as in love with it now as I was what I picked it so many years ago, and I just had to find some way to incorporate it into my new living room. I brought the pillowcases home to use in crafts to decorate my new living room, after making sure that was alright with my parents.
I have yet to find a use for the fancy pillow shams (although there is one idea starting to take shape in my head), but I immediately knew what I wanted to do with the green pillow cases: pillowcase art!
Pillowcase art has probably been done before, even if it wasn't called that, but its super easy! You take a pillowcase you don't care about saving or using ever again.
The pictures pretty bad but I promise its green
Then, you pretend its your canvas and make art! You could sew on it or paint it! I chose painting because that's the supplies I had with me at the time. I painted 2 designs, keeping in mind that I would want to frame them and controlling the size by that. If you want to try this, I suggest you buy your frames first, then be an artist.
I love flowers!!!
Once my paintings were finished and drying, I ran to the dollar tree. I found the two size frames I wanted, document size and 5x7, grabbed two of each.
Natural wood color because its easier to paint
Using the paint I had found at WalMart clearance, I gave them each a coat. The bigger one was unfinished so it was easy to paint, but the smaller one had a top coat/shine on it so it was difficult. Whenever I just put a ton of paint, it would bunch up in one spot and not be on the rest of the frame! I finally figured out how to paint it: Just get a little pit of paint, barely enough to cover it, and keep stroking the brush back and forth across one side of the frame. This will put a thin layer on the frame which dries quickly, as you are brushing over it, and also leaves texture lines. If you wanted, you could put another coat over this first one pretty easily. That would probably make it look a bit cleaner, but I wanted it to look a bit shabby so I stopped there.
All Painted!
Then I laid the glass over my paintings and cut them out with some extra fabric along each side
Making sure to keep your picture where you want it, put the frame back together, using the tabs which hold the back on to push down the extra fabric (although you still may want to trim it after its in the frame if you left a lot)
Then your art is done and ready to display!
I love the one on the right!
However, I hate the one on the left!!!
Which leads me to:
What to Do When Your Craft Looks Like Crap
I really do LOVE the flower in the blue frame, but hate the ones in the yellow frame. I don't know what I was thinking when I painted them (stick to simple things if you're not an artist) and just got really frustrated with it as I finished the project, not liking what I had made.
I packed up the blue one in a box immediately to keep it safe, but sat the yellow one on my table. I would look at it a few times a day hoping it would grow on me, but I just hated it more, so I had to do something.
The yellow frame is just such a perfect color, I had to put something in it! Since I still had over half of that pillowcase left (and 3 whole other ones) and I loved how the other flower turned out, I decided to try again, staying more in my comfort zone of drawing this time. Here's what I ended up with:
How Pretty!!!
What a relief that this turned out so well! I just threw the other flowers away and have moved on from the whole thing now, but it is a lesson. In crafting, you will try new things all the time and you won't always be good at them. You just gotta let it roll off your back, learn from your mistakes, and keep on keeping on.
Luckily for me, I already owned the paint and pillowcases and just bought the frames: $2 total for this project and I didn't lose anything but some time throwing the ugly flowers away!
So, to answer my own question: What do you do when your craft looks like crap? You move on! You go back to basics, do something you know you can do well to build your confidence back up and you try something else!
Have you ever had a horribly blotched crafting project? Did you try to fix it or did you just throw it out? Do you agree with me that those other flowers were ugly? Will you be making some pillowcase art?
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