Botanical Prints

 True Confessions time – There are a couple of things I really appreciate in life. Good cookware and fine art. The problem is, I hate to pay for either one. Truth be told, it’s not so much that I hate to pay for them, I just honestly never think to buy them.

One of these posts, I’ll tell you about the great cookware find of the century. Today’s post, is about art. We currently only have one car (thank you sucky, Utah driving-down-the-shoulder-because-I-want-to-make-a-right-turn-and-“Oh, My Heck!-I-can’t-wait-for-these-five-whole-cars-to-move”-driver that broke the law and hit and ruined our van, whose insurance wouldn’t pay for it and then sued us and the brain-damaged judge ruled for them and our insurance didn’t want to fight it and yeah, I’m only marginally bitter, if by “marginally” you mean a “whole freakin’ lot” bitter). Oh, sorry…went to a dark place for a minute there. I’m better.

As I was saying, with only one car, I often have to kill time while waiting for Hubs to break away from the news desk. A week ago, I found myself wandering Big Lots while waiting for the call that Hubs was ready to go. While perusing the Clearance Aisle—seriously, can there possibly be anything better than a Clearance Aisle at Big Lots—I stumbled upon these beauties.

For some strange reason, they had a TON of these left on the clearance aisle. At a whopping $1.25/each, I picked up these four. While these are…er lovely (coughUGLYcough) as is, I had another idea in mind. I quickly got to work to frouf them up.

A little ORB lovin’ was called for. Like how you can see the reflection of my hand taking the picture in the ORB paint at the bottom? We’re a class-act around here.

I found some pretty paper from Jo-Ann’s. I used Paper Pizzazz’s “Black/White Sprigs” and their “Tan Swirly Flowers” as the background for my prints. I busted out my handy dandy bottle of Mod Podge and got to work.

Here’s the results:

Remember how I told you I have a ton of stuff from cleaning out the in-law’s house? One of the things I “inherited” was a 1958 school dictionary. The other day Kiddo asked me to look up a word on the internet and I told him to go look in the dictionary out on the shelf. He came back a minute later and said, “Mom. This dictionary is senile. It doesn’t have the words “internet” and “super highway” in it. I love that kid. He makes me laugh. 

At any rate, I started looking at the dictionary and I found these cool botanical prints in it. Since the dictionary is not really usable for modern use, and it was a school dictionary to start with, I decided to repurpose it into some art for my walls. I have other projects in mind for this book too.

Here’s how they look in the main bathroom. I will have to find a new home for them since the boys have strongly objected to my “girling” up their bathroom. Whatevs. I think those prints have a masculine feel to them. I may go back and pick up some more purse/shoe pictures from Big Lots and do the fish and insect pages from the dictionary. Maybe the boys would like those better.

Wood Plaques – $5.00

Scrapbook Paper – $4.72

ORB and Mod Podge – Stash on hand

Total Project Time – About 1.5 hour

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