Made It - Yard Art

Hello! I've been in a creative mood over the past few days, so what follows are the results of my efforts.

This is a painted rock; the project is from the aptly-named Painting Flowers On Rocks by Lin Wellford. (I ordered the book from Edward R. Hamilton, which is a remaindered books catalogue). Not too bad for a first effort, I felt. I asked my husband and daughter what flower I had painted and they both replied daisies, which is what I had, indeed, attempted to do. The directions were easy and step-by-step. Although the rocks themselves were from our yard and thus free, the DecoArts Patio Paints, alas, were not. Still, I now have these paints left over to use in other rock painting projects.

Awhile back I had rediscovered the creative reuse store Learning From Scratch, and had bought a few things there for the express purpose of making decorative art for our garage. Why for the garage? Because it's very old and very decrepit, but because we live in a historic district, we can't just tear it down willy-nilly. So, until the day comes when we get it fixed up, I hang art on it in an attempt to detract from its aged appearance. 

Case in point is above - a fabric sample stamped with azure StazOn ink. Besides the bird and border images, I also stamped the words "summer days" on it, then glued on various white vintage buttons. For a hanger, all I did was put a stick through the grommets and tied some garden twine to the stick. 

I had also purchased three small painted wood samples at Learning From Scratch. From an old book, I had saved images from medieval art; the images are a series of illustrations that depict each month of the year. I chose June, July and August for the three wood pieces. I photocopied the images onto white cardstock, decoupaged them onto the wood pieces, then rubberstamped each one with the appropriate month using brown StazOn ink. I used more decoupage after that on the entire surface to make these waterproof. The final touch was to glue a bronze-colored vintage button onto each piece. Here's a close-up of July:

Now, I could have easily have designed the fabric piece and wood pieces to look far more elaborate than they do, but chose to go the easy route. For one thing, I don't know how well any of these items will hold up to the elements, and two - I just didn't feel like a lot of fussing around! I like how these projects turned out anyway - and anything to help our poor old garage!