Pallet for Home: Decorating the Foyer Part 1

Decorating the Foyer Part 1

Friday, June 24, 2011

After several long road trips, hiring painters, and heading to my son’s national in a few weeks, there isn’t a whole lot of “Moolah” left for “Momma” to decorate. That means I have to make my brain work over time to find creative ways to decorate the foyer.

{Expect a lot of DIY projects in the future!}

On very little money I think I’m off to a great start! Here’s a break down of all that I did.

{Custom Framed Artwork}

I have oodles and oodles of piles of frames in the attic, the garage, and in my craft room! {don’t ask why}

I was looking for 4 matching frames about 11x14 . However, what I did find were 2 - 11x14’s and 2 - 16x20’s. No problem. I split the 16x20’s at two opposite joints, trimmed to measure 11” on one side and 14” on the other, and then glued and clamed back together to give me the size that I wanted! {I even had enough moulding left over to make another smaller frame. Nothing goes to waste when money is tight!}

Oh, and the glass was left over from the one that we broke when making the very large frame that hangs over my son’s bed.

I really wanted these frames to look like high-end artwork and that I spent big bucks paying someone to custom mount them, but my broke butt had nothing.

Time to shop my parent’s house!!

My mother had a mat cutter and some odds and end piece of mats and mat board. Here’s what I had to do to make it all come together……

Mom had some random 11x14 mats with 8x10 openings {not shown} but they were all different colors. Nothing a can of spray paint couldn’t fix! Let’s not stop there…..

To take this project up a notch, I cut four more pieces of mat board with an opening of 7 3/4” x 9 3/4”. All I did was paint a small boarder in gold metallic.

Used 2-sided tape to attach the two mat boards together

and assembled the rest of frame together.

Voilà!

Totally FREE artwork. Please do not ask me where that bridge is as I surfed the internet for free black & white photographs. I found 4 landscape photos that I liked and printed them off of my home printer. Yeah for FREE

{Plastic Wall Sconces}

I love wrought iron and would have loved to purchase two wall scones for this area {still may someday when the wallet gets thicker} BUT….

I had to get creative!

I had a plastic pot, I believe around 6 inches, laying around not doing nothing. I wondered if I could cut it in half?!?!

I marked out half with painter’s tape and a sharpie marker. But what could I use to cut it?

Table saw???? No because the blade wouldn’t come up high enough.
Jig saw???? I tried but the blade kept bouncing around on the plastic.
Rotozip??? That would work but we didn’t have any accessories that would get the job done.

A quick phone call to my mom and she suggested the band saw.

It worked! Cut it like it was butter!

Trust me, I am finding all new ways to use my Dad’s tools that he probably never thought of. Once, I even cut a large frozen block of ground meat into more manageable sizes with this same band saw!! (Not to worry, He had just put on a new blade.)

I spayed the pots with an ORB finish. My ORB paint is not intended for plastic but I’m not worried about it because no one should be touching it. As you can see from the above photo, the back side doesn’t look so great. I filled the insides of each pot with floral foam and attached using hot glue and duck tape.

Here is my only expense…… I purchased some faux plants from Wal-mart.

Here’s another question that quickly popped up-

How was I going to hang up the planter/sconce?

At the end of this project, I spotted these floral picks in my arsenal. Why couldn’t the little curve in the pick be used to hold a nail?

I hot glued in place two floral picks/hooks in the back through the duck tape. Working quickly, I pressed the hooks in but left them out past the pot’s edge, and then pressed the pot against the wall. That pushed the hooks in and made sure the hooks are on the same plane as the pot. (did that make sense?)