Framed Art for Mimi

My niece is moving soon and planning how she wants to decorate her new house - she's been sending me tons of Pinterest ideas of things she'd like us to make together but now time is running out before she goes so I thought I'd make this for her as a surprise. I'm feeling a little guilty about how easy and quick this came together, not really very creative of me haha - but she likes it and it turned out really cute so I'll share it with you :)

All I did was type out the words I wanted, played with fonts, colors and sizes, then printed it out onto white cardstock. Using a standard hole punch, I punched out some gold dots from paper I had left over from making decorations for Paige's graduation station (click here for that post) and glued them on using glue dots. Do you have glue dots? If not you should try them, they are super handy and worked really good on this project. You could also freehand write your words, or use stencils or alphabet stickers, and glue on the dots using plain old elmers if that's what you want - I really took the easy shortcut way by printing from my computer and using the glue dots. This whole project took maybe 15 minutes, and it took that long because I couldn't decide on which font I wanted! Put the completed paper in a cute frame and you're done.

I played around with adding glitter or paint to the gold "good day" but decided it didn't need it.

I stuck the gold punched out dots right onto the glue dots, then peeled them off and stuck to my paper.

I didn't think to measure the frame opening and the paper to see if they were the
 same size, so I had to trim the paper to fit. Fortunately I had left enough
space all around the edges that it wasn't a problem to trim a little off. 

Glitter Words

Glitter and glue. Glitter and glue. I do love those words :). I also love this very simple decorating idea of tracing on some letters and glittering them up! You can obviously use whatever word you want (as long as you can fit it on your paper), choose your color, font and frame - totally up to you.

I did "NOEL", mostly because it's short and less work haha. I guess JOY might have been even easier...I also played with "MERRY" but didn't like how I traced the letters on the paper so didn't finish that one. Am using it though to show you some of the process.

Supplies needed:
- frame
- 1 piece of letter size cardstock, cut to fit in the frame
- chunky glitter, craft paint, marker (I did the same color for all of those)
- foam or small paintbrush
- craft glue (I used white glue that dries clear)

Print out the word you want to display using a bold font, size them to fit on the paper (mine is 8x10). Cut out the letters, play with them on the cardstock to see how they look best then trace around the letters with a marker. Either lightly paint in the letters (don't make it too thick or the paper will buckle) or color in with a marker. Spread glue very thinly over all of the letters, all the way to the edge trying not to leave any gaps - then sprinkle on the coarse glitter. If you do have any gaps in the glitter just dab in more glue and sprinkle some more. I sprinkled it on very thickly then tapped it off into a pie pan to catch and reuse the glitter that didn't stick.

Let it dry and place carefully in your frame, try not to move it too much before getting the frame together because the glitter will spread around on the picture - I tried for no glitter anywhere except in the letters to give it a clean look.








For "MERRY" I traced the letters with a green marker and planned to fill in with green and green glitter but then decided I didn't love my placement....

"NOEL" turned out good all silver though!

Play around with this idea - I chose words to glitter and frame but you could do a symbol (star, candle, tree...), handprints for baby's first Christmas, paw print for puppy's first Christmas haha, use your imagination!

I am working on a little Christmas arrangement on a table
placed behind our couch. I like it so far...