I finished the One Room Challenge  (ORC) two weeks ago, but did not finish some of my DIY Art Projects by the deadline. If you haven’t been following along, I chose to make over my primary bedroom and the challenge was to pick a room and over the course of eight weeks, post your weekly progress with a final reveal in Week 8. Everyone participating in the challenge is on the  ORC website.  At the end of this post, I’ll link all 8 weeks of posts so you can see the progression and the before and after pictures.

The room looked fine on Reveal Day, but I knew I wanted to do so much more in terms of my artwork. So I’ve taken these last two weeks to really finish my vision of the room. There’s always going to be things you want to change in your home, but for now, I’m so pleased.

The first thing I did was take down these resin pictures from the wall because I always had an idea for creating some fun frames to make them more substantial. The frames were only going to be on 3 sides and are asymmetrical. Stay tuned for how they turned out. Here’s the before picture of how I originally posted this art wall.

I gathered up my materials; some wood putty, Odie’s oil and I bought a 1×2 piece of wood from Home Depot.

After marking out my measurements, I cut the pieces with my saw.

I didn’t want to miter them so this is what it looked like when I dry fit them. One side is longer than the other and I think that adds a cool touch.

After dry fitting, I used wood glue to hold them together, clamped them and them used my pneumatic stapler to staple them at the seams in the back.

After the glue was dry, I used just a little wood putty and sanded the seams.

After taping off the face of the pictures, I tried to use the Odie’s Oil but it wasn’t doing enough so I went to look for some stain in my paint stash.

After mixing some Ipswich Pine and a tiny bit of Golden Oak that I had left over, this is how it looked. I wanted the frames a light color and this is not that much different, but just enough to add a little something.

For the next project, I took two macrame rings and some macrame cord that my Mom gave me a long time ago. I had this idea to make a long piece of textile art. I’ve seen these all over Pinterest and in Showhouses so I thought I’d give it a try.

I picked out some cream and gold cord and there were some large wooden beads that I wanted to use also. I took some of the cord and unwound it, which is what the material on the left is. I showed this because I was doing this late at night and was so lame about taking pictures.

First I took the two rings and just made a slit in it so I could connect the two rings together.

After that is when I found myself at home alone and couldn’t film and do the project at the same time. Also, I couldn’t find my tripod. But here is the finished wall with framed resin pictures and what the textile art turned out to be. I had a wooden bead garland that I added to it to give it some pizazz.

The next project was to frame two pieces of artwork. Here is the original picture I posted. The two black pictures are what I’m building frames for and I’m actually going to move them to the other side of the room.

I got some 1×2’s and started cutting them with my manual miter saw. If I really start making some frames on a regular basis, which I probably will since framing is so expensive, I’m definitely going to invest in a real miter saw. It would have made short work of this process.

Here I am dry fitting some pieces to make sure they fit perfectly. One thing with miter cuts, you have to be really precise.

Dry fitting all four pieces just to make sure.

Gluing and clamping.

Wood putty to fill in the tiny cracks.

Now these frames looked really good with just the Odie’s Oil. It subtly brought out the wood grain. I stapled the back of the pictures to the frame.

Here is the before picture of the corner where I want to hang the pictures.

And here is how it looks after.

In the area where I took off these pictures, this is what I have now. I didn’t have time to hang this metal picture because I couldn’t figure out if I should frame it or not. But I wanted to get it in the room since it was part of my inspiration for the whole room. I got this from Goodwill for $3.99 years ago and it still had the tag on it. I still think I should mount it on something, but until I figure it out, I just used some command strips. The butterfly sculpture is from my parents who had this in the living room where I grew up.

So that’s my DIY Art for my primary bedroom. I think everything turned out so well even though it took me about 5x the amount of time I thought it would. Isn’t that always the case? But it was worth it in the end.

Let me know if you like to make art and/or frame your art and don’t forget to check out my 8 week One Room Challenge below.

See ya next time.

ORC Wk 1         ORC Wk 2        ORC Wk 3        ORC Wk 4        ORC Wk 5        ORC Wk 6        ORC Wk 7        ORC Wk 8