{Almost} Free Christmas Art for Our Gallery Wall

My project this weekend was to Christmas-ize the gallery wall in our family room. It is usually a forgotten zone at Christmas time, but after getting a few ideas from Young House Love’s new book, I decided to use their idea #143 to “find free art”.

{The gallery wall also uses their ideas #117, #130, #142 and #144, but I won’t give too much info out. You’ll just have to get a copy of their book for yourself. You can thank me later!}

My first “free art” project idea was to make a chalkboard drawing on the magnetic chalkboard that I usually keep our Instagram gallery on. If you want to see my tutorial on how to make a magnetic chalkboard and Instagram gallery, just click over to here.

I am trying out a free trial of Photoshop Elements, so I played around with some fonts till I got the wording into the shape of a Christmas tree. The fonts that I used were Franchise, Handy George, and Mercury Script. The ornaments I used are Bergamot. I cropped the image into four sections and printed it out on my computer.

Once I taped the image together, I rubbed chalk on the back of the paper. I laid the image on the chalkboard surface, traced over the lettering, and then filled in the transferred outlines with chalk. Diane from In My Own Style has some useful tips in her tutorial on how to decoratively draw chalkboard art.

Here is the completed chalkboard! I’m little addicted to Photoshop Elements now. I think it’s a keeper!

My second free art project was a framed Christmas image that I printed on burlap. I found the Christmas image and the tutorial on how to print on fabric from Graphics Fairy. This project was free (for me) because I already had the frame, burlap, card stock paper, adhesive spray and masking tape. (I ironed the wrinkles out of my piece of burlap before I began.)

I cut my burlap to the same size as a piece of heavy card stock paper and adhered it to the card stock with spray adhesive in a well-ventilated area. To make sure that the glue was fully dry, I pressed it with a hot iron. To prevent the burlap strings from getting hung up in the printer, I trimmed any excess off the sides and put a piece of masking tape along the top edge that would feed through the printer first.

I printed the image on the burlap the same way you would print on a piece of paper, by laying the card stock/burlap face down. After the image was printed, I pressed it with the hot iron again to set the ink.

I removed the masking tape carefully so I wouldn’t unravel the fabric. I popped the image into the frame with the card stock still attached.

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I added couple more things to the entertainment center…branches from our arborvitae trees, ornaments and pine cones fill a metal bowl.

I spotted the berries from a Heavenly Bamboo Nandina bush, so they found a home in a wine bucket with some more arborvitae branches.

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By the way, welcome to my new WordPress website! I couldn’t have done it without all the hard work that Sara of Moonsteam Designs put into redesigning the blog and moving me over from Blogger!

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I’m linking up to these fabulous blogs:

Interiors By Kenz

The Farmhouse Porch

Home Stories A to Z

Clean & Scentible

DIY Showoff

House of Hepworths

Just Us Four Blog

At The Picket Fence

It’s Overflowing

Young House Love

Crafty Scrappy Happy

Centsational Girl

Inspired By Charm