Easy DIY Abstract Art

You really don't need lots of mad artistic skills to make a passable piece of abstract art for your home.

This post contains affiliate links. This means if you click through and make a purchase the cost to you will be the same but Sum of their Stories will receive a small commission. Our dining room has needed a something to go on the wall in a big ol' space for the 2 1/2 years since we moved here.  I finally found a suitable old canvas in a local charity shop to paint over and last week I got to work. It's really easy and quite a lot of fun to make your own art and if you don't like it or get tired of it after a while you can just paint over it!

To make you own DIY Abstract Art you will need:

A canvas - buy new or pick up one in a charity shop or garage sale maybe Household emulsion paint (latex) Spray and/or acrylic paint in your choice of secondary colours  A couple of brushes, nothing special - just use what you have Ideas - pinterest is your friend here, I've a board of ideas to get you started.

I found this red canvas for £4, it's about 24" x 31" (61cm x 79cm) - perfect.

The first thing you want to do is get rid of any colour you don't want. 

I wanted our new art to be shades of white & grey with a touch of blue and pink. So I painted the whole canvas with 2 coats of regular household emulsion paint (I believe you call it Latex in the US)  

Now you are going to create your masterpiece. 

It's all about splodging on layers of paint until you are happy. How you do this will depend on the look you want and the paint you have.

I had a very small bit of spray paint left over from something else in the perfect shade of blue so that's where I started.

It may be hard for you to believe but this is not the final look I was going for!!! My husband pulled a doubtful face at this point, I don't blame him!

You can see I also had a teeny tiny bit of silver spray paint hanging around so I squirted that on too. If I had had more silver I think I would have done much more of that and much less of the blue. But this is ok, because we are working in layers these early stages don't really matter too much. Just keep going!

Next I mixed my grey acrylic paint with the emulsion (latex) and just painting in on randomly. I gave the middle a bit of interest with a band just the grey on it's own and a bit of a line up the right side. I just left a few bits of blue showing properly, but there are a few areas where the white/grey mix is pretty thin and the blue shows through lightly. 

Once you have the bare bones like this I'd recommend letting it marinate. You want to leave it to dry anyway, but give yourself a day or so to look at it again with fresh eyes. 

I decided this needed to be lighter all over and it needed some proper points of interest. 

I added a few areas of pink, a few grey and white lines with the finer brush. It was all very add hock, just a few bits here and there. Stand back every now and again, make a cuppa then return to your art and see what you think it needs more of. 

Just keep going with random blocks, lines or even dots and whirls if you like. Stop when you think it's enough.

To finish I used the larger of my brushes, with just the smallest amount of white paint to go over most areas. This softened the whole thing and lightening up some of the areas that felt too dark.

You can see here how the almost dry brush softens the pink area.

This is probably the busiest part of the artwork. Those lines through the white blob were done with the thinner brush and grey paint whilst the white shape underneath was still wet, to give a variable effect.

You can see the almost dry brush effect in this close up too.
And here it is in all it's glory in situ.

I'm sure the light balance is all off in this photo, the sun was streaming in the window - hooray! But it gives you an idea. One day I'm going to paint those wooden chairs white.  You can also see my globe makeover and where it lives ....

... and those are my Autumn Apothecary jars on the table 

I really enjoyed making my unique piece of abstract art and as a complete bonus, I hardly spent a thing. 

The main rule seems to be there are no rules, it's art so you can do what you like. 

If you paint a bit and the next day decide you don't like it you can just paint over it. Have fun, I can honestly say it was much easier than I thought it would be to create something that's not embarrassing to hang on the wall. Do you fancy having a go?

 

Autumn Apothecary Jars for free

Introducing just a little autumn or fall decor into your home for free (or almost free)

Today I'm delighted to be joining a lovely group of creative bloggers to bring you the We are Pinnable Blog Hop - Celebrating Fall. More of that later.

I'm not much of a one for lots of 'changing with the seasons" decor. We have Christmas decorations that go up each year and until recent that was about it. Then I was given a glass jar from Ikea which I assume is supposed to be for spaghetti and thought it might be fun to have a little seasonally changing apothecary style arrangement for the dining table. I sourced a couple more jars very cheaply (charity shop and old sweet jar) and this summer they have looked quite pretty in a floral sort of way.

I was very inspired a couple of weeks ago by Leanne from Faeries and Fauna who had shared a whole load of Autumn/Fall ideas to fill jars like these. Check all those ideas out here.

I wanted to fill my jars for free if possible and I almost managed it!

First I went on a foraging mission. We have a small wood nearby so me and my carrier bag went for a walk. I was hoping for conkers but this wood has no horse chestnut trees apparently. Never mind, what it does has is a whole load of oak trees so there were acorns everywhere. I also found some pine cones, not quite as many as I had hoped but some at least.

Things like this can be full of bugs so I spread them all out on a foil covered baking tray and gave them 30 minutes in a hot oven (200c) 

The smell is not as pleasant as you might hope! Not awful but not delightful either. 

The green acorns went a little bit brown in the heat and all the cups fell off.

I threw away the ones that had split and, feeling a bit ridiculous (and hoping no one in the family would walk in and see what I was doing) I used my hot glue gun to stick the cups back on to the acorns.

It worked though, they look cute and very Autumnal! 

As I didn't manage to collect enough pinecones I just mixed them in with some leafy looking pot pourri I already had. I might go on another pine come quest again later. Next time we have some really windy weather I pop out and see what has fallen.

2 down, 1 to go!
My original idea had been pinecones in the tall jar, conkers in the short fat jar and acorns in the little jar. With slim picking of pinecones and a total lack of conkers it was time for a new idea.
I'd been teaching our middle son to make origami cranes the other day and on the TV show Create it Yourself they had filled a Bell jar with origami shapes, so autumnal geometric origami seemed like a plan.
I used coloured paper from old envelopes, I just trimmed them to squares of various sizes.

I used a whole load of Youtube tutorials, some were easier to make than others. Octahedron, Cube, Paper Diamond (this one is in French and I got in a bit of a hot mess with the glueing but I think that was more me than the tutorial!)& Pyramid. This one is called Diamond and I found the first one was tricky to put the two colours together, but once I got the hang of it, it was super easy and one of my favourites.

My other favourite is this one, the Fox Box. It uses 3 little squares and was really easy.

Once you start looking on YouTube you can find dozens of great tutorials, these are just the few I found with a quick 'geometric origami' search.

So there it is, I managed to fill these 3 jars ALMOST for free! 

I'm on the lookout for fancier apothecary jars each time I visit a charity shop as these are pretty basic looking. But we are doing this for free/almost free, using what we have instead of always buying new so for now I'm happy! Update & what can go wrong:  I found some conkers, just bunged them in the pinecone/pot pourri jar as they were and a day later this had happened:

Turns out drying these kind of things out in the oven first is really important! Especially if you have jars with lids. I've since dried them in the oven in the same way as the acorns and all is well.

Now it's time to see all the other 'Celebrating Fall' projects and ideas:

Autumn Apothecary Jars for Free from Sum of Their Stories

Celebrating Fall with Centsably Creative

Fall Apple Recipes with Chickery Travels

10 Things I Love for Fall from Sassy Townhouse Living

Turn your Spring Wreath into Fall Wreath by Nelidesign

10 Low Cost Activities for Fall by SnapshotsandSnippets

Celebrate Fall with a Free Cookbook by Ask Dr. Ho
Celebrate Fall with Pumpkin Arrangements and Apple Cream Tarts by Faeries and Fauna
Easy DIY Fall Faux Floral by Jennie Louise Marie

Slightly visible mending

A quick fix for a cardigan with a hole.

Visible mending is very popular right now, hand stitching over patches of contrast fabric. I absolutely love the effect and I really love the principle of mending what we have rather than immediately buying new all the time.

For our daughter's black cardigan that she wears for work however, visible mending wasn't suitable, it's plain black needed all the way. Invisible mending seemed too much of a stretch so we did a quick repair that is half way between the two. I'm giving it the catchy title of "slightly visible mending", do you think it will catch on?!

This repair took about 5 minutes, it actually took longer to get the sewing machine out and then put it away after, than it did to do the repair.

The hole was near the elbow, originally I was thinking elbow patches, no need to reinvent the wheel here.

But the hole was in fact just below the elbow so unless an elbow patch was enormous it wasn't going to work. Also the cardigan is a fine knit and I couldn't think how to make elbow patches that wouldn't be too bulky and weigh the elbows down and pull them out of shape.

All I needed was a small rectangle of thin jersey knit fabric (this is actually a pair of one of the boys boxer shorts that had worn completely threadbare at the top so the elastic was in danger of falling out, just don't tell anyone I used underpants for this repair!) and some black thread.

Black things are hard to take photos of - just saying!

I slid the sleeve, inside out, onto the free arm of the sewing machine.

Then I laid the rectangle of knit fabric on top and stitched all over it. 

Because the sleeve fitted snugly on the free arm there was no turning it round so I stitched forward, then backwards but at a very slight angle, then forwards again and so on. It made a big zig zag of stitches.

I removed the sleeve from the free arm, trimmed any excess fabric, then slid it back on right side out.

I then repeated the process on the right side, that way I could make sure I was covering the largest hole really well.

The finished repair is pretty hard to see, doesn't feel overly rough on the inside and is not heavy or too lumpy.

Success! 
Maybe not an idea for your best togs, but to make a work cardie last a little bit longer - perfect. 

Delicates Wash bag

Keep your delicates safe in the washing machine using a little net bag.

I'm going to start with a bit of a long background story today. If you have no interest in the 'why' and only want the 'how' just scroll on down!
I have had a very lengthy (ie: all my life) love/hate relationship with sockies, invisible socks, sockettes, shoe liners, call them what you will. I love how they look ie: you can't see them I love how they help stop your shoes stinking I hate how they don't stay on my feet It is just like when we were kids and our socks would always 'go to sleep' in our welly boots. Here's a facebook post of mine from last year:

Well I'm happy to say I have found a solution. PEDS Liners. I saw a review online (I can't remember where now, sorry) and thought they were worth a try.  Whoop whoop, they are great. They stay on my feet all day. It's the little rubbery grippy bits on the heel that make all the difference.  So once this problem was finally solved I had a new problem.  How do I stop these delicate and fairly tiny things getting swallowed up inside the washing machine? They are on the expensive side so I want them to last, and getting caught up in the machine somewhere is not good for the machine either. The solution - a net delicates bag to wash them in.
These delicates bags are available in the shops and they are not expensive.  You might decide to go and buy one right now and that would be great. If however, like me, you have a bit of old net curtain and an old zip (mine was rescued from an old cushion cover) then you can make one "FOR FREEEE" (Bedtime Stories anyone?) and in about 10 minutes.

Cut a piece of net curtain about 50cm x 18cm (20" x 7")

• Pin one short side of the net to one side of the zip and stitch.
• Pin and sew the other short side of the net to the other side of the zip.
• Trim the zip.
• Open the zip a little - this is important!
• You've basically made a tube so shuffle the bag round, until the zip is about 1 inch down from the edge.
• Stitch down each side seam, I went back and forth over the zip a few times just to make sure it was secure.
• Turn right side out through the open zip.

We leave this in the laundry basket so both our daughter and I can add our PEDS liners to the bag as we go along. Then whoever is putting the washing on can just bung the whole bag in with the rest without having to think about it too much.

I believe other little sockette things with the grippy heel are available, but PEDS Liners are the only one I've tried. This post isn't sponsored by the PEDS people, I just really like them! These are affiliate links, if you make a purchase when clicking through from here Sum of their Stories will receive a small commission. The cost to you is the same. Shop UK:
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