craft it: upcycled art

Josh helped me with this fabulous free upcycled art project. This project was inspired by my friend (and college roommate, go tigers!) Maury. You should totally check out her blog, its all about the fantastic projects she and her husband are doing to transform their new house. She's got tons of great ideas!

Maury had this project recently about using toilet paper and paper towel rolls to create fun free art. She said she got the idea from pinterest. So here's our version of her project. Straight from someone else, to pinterest, to Maury, to me to you

It didn't take too long to collect the paper towel and toilet paper tubes. Apparently we go through a lot of tp and pt at our house. Hmmmm, might have to look into that. Anyways, all you need after that is some hot glue (my current crafting obsession), spray paint and small finished nails for hanging.

Here was the wall I chose. You can see this wall (in our bathroom) from our bedroom. It hasn't every really seemed too bland to me before. I thought this wall would be a good place to test out the art. If we didn't like it, then no one else had to see how bad it turned out. And if it turned out great....then we'd just make another one for somewhere else in the house!

I don't have any "during" pictures of this project. Just too much playing with Elliot I guess! I 100% copied this design that was on Maury's blog.

I cut the pieces and glued them together. Josh and I agreed on using silver spray paint because a) we already had it at the house and b) we thought it would give it a iron-filigree kind of look. Josh did the spray painting (and came up with this ingenius way to get even coats!)

and where was the babe while we were doing all this crafting?
why right here of course!
(side note: elliot does have hair. it is just really blonde on top!)

Here's Josh in the tub. Hahaha, had to write that :) We used the very precise technique of eh-i-think-this-looks-ok-here-so-we'll-just-throw-a-few-nails-up-here-and-hope-for-the-best to hang up our new art:

here's an up close and personal shot:

15 toilet paper tubes: free!
shiny silver spray paint: free!
finishing nails: free!
hot glue: free!
grand total: free!
now that's the kind of math this mama likes