Design Stash

{Tattered Vintage Book Stack}

I took a quick shopping trip to Goodwill to find some old books……the older and more beat up the better 🙂 I chose books similar in width and also looked for yellowing pages…..that will add to the vintage charm!

Remove book covers…..

You can peel back as much or as little of the binding as you’d like. The more you peel off the shabbier your books will look 🙂

This is the look I ended up with…..

Next, you’ll need to gather your supplies. I grabbed some stamps and a brown stamp pad I had on hand, some embellishments like the vintage bookplate and some lace and twine. Feel free to use what you currently have.

Using your stamps or whatever you’ve decided to use begin embellishing the spines of your books.

Add your other embellishments with hot glue.

I flipped the top book over to the backside so I would have a blank page that I could use my larger vintage words stamp on and then I covered that with a thick burlap type ribbon that I had in my stash. Finally wrap your book stack like a gift with the twine.

Different than your common clothesline frame I decided to add a bit more flair to it with my ‘little ones’ mini pennant:

This frame was originally gold then painted white and then finally spray-painted yellow. I used small eye hooks, picture wire and pliers.

 I screwed the hooks into the frame starting one-third of the way down because I knew that I wanted three ‘lines’ of photos. The second pair of screws went in halfway down and the third pair one-third of the way up from the bottom. Simply create a starting point and continue twisting and finish with the pliers until they are secure.

Next, thread the wire through the hook on one side and use the pliers to wrap it tightly and then thread through the corresponding side. I left my wire a bit loose across because I knew I wanted it to not look perfect, if you know what I mean 🙂

Simple as that! Now you can use any size clothespin you would like to hang your photos or postcards or whatever you plan to hang on your picture wire.

Now onto the mini pennant banner!!
Here are the supplies you will need: I printed ‘Little Ones’ out using my printer. The scalloped circle and mini flags were cut using my Silhouette. You can easily cut a thin rectangle out of scrapbook paper and clip the edges to resemble the little flags!

The rest is super simple! I folded the flags in half over the twine and glued them closed. I used my stamp pad to distress the edges of my mini flags and ‘Little Ones’ cutout.

Now using your clothespins clip your mini pennant banner to your picture wire on your frame. And your done…….ready to hang!

This creation went perfectly in our Master bedroom with the yellow accents and sweet pictures of our kiddos – it’s fun waking up to their beautiful ‘little’ faces 🙂

Make it a beautiful day 🙂

I finished my family room gallery wall about a week ago but I still hadn’t found the perfect something to put into a frame with awkward dimensions – 5 3/4 x 11 3/4 – what is that? I contemplated getting a picture enlarged and cropping to fit the frame or framing a piece of patterned paper to compliment my color scheme…..hmmmm……Then while toodling around on Pic Monkey I decided I would make my own very simple typography print! I knew I wanted a black type on white look so I googled ‘white paper’ and clicked ‘Images’ and saved a piece of white ‘paper’ to my computer. You can use any color background you would like……simply google that color and save the image to your computer. 

Next, in Pic Monkey open the white paper file you saved. Here you will resize to fit the dimensions you would like. My funky dimensions in pixels was 431 x 881. If you would like to create a print to fit in an 8 x 10 frame you would want 600 x 750 in pixels. I used this handy calculator to convert my measurement from inches to pixels. Click ‘Resize’ and enter your dimensions. Be sure to unclick ‘keep proportions’ and then click ‘apply.’ 

 Now you get to enter your text! On the far left hand side click the icon that looks like a ‘P’, then ‘Add Text.’ You can play around with your font, color and sizing until you have a look you love. I didn’t get into all of the fun features and effects but I did add a little asterick for kicks. You can do the same by clicking the ‘Overlays’ icon, again located on the far left side. I chose ‘Stars’ and sized my shape for my print. Frame, hang and enjoy 🙂 

 I’ll share my gallery walll later on this week but here’s a little sneak-peak! 

 I hope you enjoy the tutorial! Have you used Pic Monkey to create your own print? I’m always learning and would love any tips or tricks you’ve learned!xoxo,