August Pinterest Project: Crafty Art

Each month, I try to tackle something new that is Pinterest-inspired. This month, I am working on making my sewing corner a crafty zone that helps me be even more inspired to create and sew. This stage of the project was adding some craft-themed art to the space!

I mentioned in this post that I wanted to work on this area. Here is the "before" picture to jog your memory...

First step was to take down the white board so I could start with a clean slate!

I knew exactly what I wanted to do...inspired by several pins I'd seen floating around! I found some embroidery hoops in a box in the attic. There were only three (left over from our cross-stitching days) so I just used what I had.  It is a pretty small wall, so 3 probably was a perfect number!

I picked out 3 of my favorite fabrics from my scrap bin (you can see all three of these fabrics in this post) and tried them out in the hoops.

I just took my fabric scissors and chopped the excess off. I knew it didn't have to be perfect at this point, but I wasn't yet sure how I was going to finish off the backs of these, so I left a little bit of extra. Then I took the pieces out of the hoops and ironed them. See how they are very imperfect circles? Totally ok, because they are just going to get trimmed more in a minute!

I thought about hot glueing the extra fabric to the inside of the hoop, but what if I want to change these up down the line? (Or, perish the thought, use them as embroidery hoops again some day?) So instead I opted to just trim the excess down as far as I could so they would lay nice and flat against the wall. I did, of course, make sure the fabric was in the hoop the way I wanted it and pulled everything nice and tight before I trimmed them.

When it came time to put them up on the wall, I needed to determine what layout I liked best. I cut out 3 paper templates to give me some ideas...

Random, or symmetrical?

Or random again?

In the end, that first layout 3 pictures up was my favorite, so I put the templates exactly where I wanted them, and then just hammered a small nail right through the template.

The paper pulled off the nail easily, so all I had to do was pop my hoop art up there!

Lets hear it for some pretty, free art! Well, free because I already had the hoops and the fabric scraps. The fabric definitely was not free to begin with, haha.

This space is improving...

As you may have already guessed, I have plans for something else in that empty spot underneath the hoops. I'm excited to get started on it once I find the right supplies!

Anyone else try anything Pinterest-inspired lately? How about some changes to define a certain area? I just love changes to a space that make me smile when I look at them!