DIY wall art

Hola!
I had another post planned for you but it didn't work out, so I decided to show you guys 3 easy DIY wall art ideas that I've made over the years! I'm so sorry that I don't have any photos of the process (which I will have in future DIY posts), but I made some of these over 4 years ago. I know that you're probably not interested in reading long paragraphs of me rambling on just about excuses, so lets get right into it!

#1: MELTED CRAYON ART

I'm sure you've seen this on pinterest or on other blogs, but I still wanted to share my experience with his well-known DIY. It actually turned out way better than I thought, because generally, DIYs on pinterest don't always turn out like the pictures!

First, arrange the crayons into a rainbow (or however you like) at the top of the canvas. You can also peel the crayon wrappers, but am WAY too lazy for that... HAHA!

Then just glue the crayons onto the canvas using a glue gun.

For the next step, make sure you cover the surface you're working on because this can get a bit messy.

Get a hairdryer and blow the crayons on high heat. You have to be REALLY patient for this 'cause it may take a while... but try to blow from the bottom first and when it starts to drip; blow down, from the top. I don't know if that makes sense, so one more time... At first, blow up from the bottom just to get it going. Then, blow down from the top, to get a really nice drip.

You can see in mine that under the actual drips, there are diagonal splatters, and I absolutely LOVE this effect. Also, it doesn't immediately drip down. At teh top, its one big block of color before dispersing. I almost didn't get this effect because I wasn't pateint enough. But I did, and I'm glad.

#2: GOLD USA MAP

This one is much easier than it seems, and it is super classy and the gold touch makes it somewhat fancy.

Start off by taking a colored paper. I used a beige-ish grey color. For this I would personally go with a neutral color, but you can pick anything, even a neon color would be pretty cool. Last tip, you should go with a lighter color just becasue the next step will be much easier.

In order to trace the map, I used a light-box type of system. I basically found a map of the USA on my laptop, and placed the paper on the screen. Then, I took a pencil and lightly traced the lines. BTW: this may not be the best for the laptop...

Use a gold paint (or any other color), and fill in the map you just traced. Once the paint dries, simply use a black sharpie and trace the map you originally drew. I also decided to draw a sun on New York City.

I then cut out around the black outline, just leaving about 2 millimeters of the colored paper showing.  For the last step, simply glue your cut out map onto a sheet of white paper (preferably a thick painting paper).

You can also do this directly on the white paper, but I found that this way, it helped the map really POP.

I'm not going to go into this in detail, but I also made the canvas next to the map.  I simply painted it using blue and red to get a violet color, and wrote "work in progress" in gold.

I paired these 2 pieces with a pumpkin I painted gold, and my aroma therapy from Sabon.

#3: BRANDY MELIVLLE WOODEN SIGN
So this is my take on those super cute wooden sign you always stare at in Brandy Melville. This is by far the easiest of the 3, so just take a leap and try it!

Very simply, get a scrap of wood. You can get a board cut for you at your local hardware store.

Then get some acrylic paint and paint your background, then your symbol.

Another idea is to use wood stain, so that when you paint, you can have that beautiful wood grain
show.

I did it all by hand, but if you need some extra help, use washi tape to help get straight and clean lines.

Lastly, use a drill to drill 2 holes at the top of the signs. Pull some twine or a rope through to easily hang it up! I didn't do this, however, I gled 4 magnets to the back of it so I could stick it onto my magnetic wall.

-<3 J