Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Painting for David's Room

I painted my first canvas for David's room before his arrival (a bit late in posting). Of course, it is amateur, but I enjoyed this new endeavor. Excuse the flash...every angle I tried to take a picture from flashed like this because of the clear coat I put over the painting.

I painted the letters and glued them on to create a 3D look. And please know that we used some special Amazing Goop glue to prevent any letters from falling off. Thanks Ashley for the checkerboard tip on the edges.

David's room and bedding has a safari theme which is why I went with earth tone colors for the painting: chocolate brown, tan, and green.

One of the main reasons I liked the animals is because I remembered how neat it was when our daughter was so little and could look at the animals on her bumper pad. She had a safari theme with animals and daisies in girly colors. She would smile, coo, and talk to them. We loved watching her interact with them which was a bonus because I did not want animals for her initially, just daisies. As you can see, David's bumper pad has animals for him as well.

My nursing nook.

This is our make shift changing table and dresser. It was a hand me down to Chris' brother in law and then he gave it to Chris when he was in high school. We detached the hutch/book shelf and Chris attached a mirror to it.

This wall hanging is what inspired me to paint the canvas. The background of the painting somewhat matches the lion's mane.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Birth Announcements

The last three months of neglect to this website were filled with final baby preparations, having a baby and adjusting to having a newborn and a toddler. I have been experimenting with lots of recipes, but I have not remembered to take pics nor had the energy to post them. However, I spent tons of what little free time I had for about a week making birth announcements. So, I thought I'd share this project on the site and show some of my followers a picture of our sweet new baby. :) For more pics of him, click on "Journey with the Lee Family" on the side bar.

Making the birth announcements seemed appealing to save money. The average price for a nice announcement was around $2.00 plus postage (I could have gotten them cheaper, but we had to use a new photographer because our photographer friend was out of town for an extended period). I did not want to spend that much so I decided to create my own. It sounded simple in my mind, but the task became HUGE! All this to say, I will probably pay for them in the future as my sleep deprived self did not like spending every waking moment on them for several days. Overall, I did like the final result.

To simplify the project, I took the paper to Kinko's to have cut (8.5x11 sheets cut into 3 columns). I had cut/trimmed the wallet size pics myself and it took a while. However, Kinkos set their cutting machine on the wrong setting which butchered my paper! :( Michael's was the only place that carried the paper in Little Rock and I had bought them out. So, I had to drive to North Little Rock to the Michael's to replace the paper. This was a huge inconvenience and seemed like a waste of time. However, Kinkos did all my services for free because of it and even drilled the holes for me which saved me tons of time. They also offered to cut/trim the transparent paper as well because they felt so bad. I was going to tackle that, but their initial mistake ended up saving me money, time and they definitely cut better than me. In the end, I was thankful they messed up. :) They even refunded me for having to buy the paper twice.

I got my ribbon from Hobby Lobby. I purchased 2 sizes of this transparent sparkly white: a medium width and thin width. The medium width looked better, but I ended up using both sizes to complete the announcements. The pictures are wallet sizes of one of David's newborn pic poses.
Originally, I wanted to print directly on the cardstock. However, I loved this thick light blue metallic cardstock which did not accept toner on it (too slick). Our inkjet printer had trouble with the cardstock because it was extra thick. So, I opted to print on an opal transparent type thin scrapbook paper. Using double sided tape was the cleanest way to attach the pic and transparent paper to the cardstock.