Living Room Update: Personalized Canvas Art

Hey all! Thank you so much to the incredible response to my last post. I love Love LOVE hearing all of your ideas for high fun/low cost ways to enjoy somebody’s company 🙂

Today, we’re venturing indoors and taking a gander at the next leg of my now infamous living room redo. When we last spotted the living room in its entirety it looked something like this:

AH!!! (cue shower scene music from “Psycho”) but thanks to you, I got some inspiration, a game plan, and even…the most amazing gift, a piece of furniture!!! …and my sister said I was living in a Hallmark movie tsk tsk little one 😉 Anyways, I promise to give you a full update ASAP, but for now I still have a couple of projects I want to show you.

            When you throw out huge pieces of furniture, you’ll begin to notice how epically large and bare your walls are. That is exactly where the Mr. and I found ourselves, and here’s the thing about us, we’re pretty picky when it comes to artwork. The hubs and I are huge fans of photography, and I have a borderline obsession with Typography. Remember this post? Still in love with that sign. Anyways I looked and scoured for weeks but couldn’t really find anything that “spoke” to me or was substantial enough for my ginormous wall.

            THEN an epiphany hit, when most of my epiphanies hit, while doing a Jillians Michaels DVD. Weird. “What if we did a personalized pic?” No, not a life size of our faces, although I’ve seen that in some houses. Again, little weird. Something more subtle, more artsy, more tasteful, that we could perfect just for our space.

            Now, here’s a fun fact. I have many close friends and family members that are professional photographers. Throughout the years we’ve been blessed with a session or two with them. So awesome. Last year, one of our good friends and owner of iGate Photography did just that. She devoted an entire very chilly Saturday doing all sorts of crazy things with us. We got shots like this

and this

and even a little of this.

Yikes I missed my wax appointment.

So many great pics, but this one,

this one belonged in my living room. And the great thing about having a friend as a photographer ,is that she will painstakingly tweak colors and brightness for you as you analyze the various shade of teal and green in your ideal color spectrum. Only true friends can love you through all of your “pickiness” and re-assure you you’re not crazy to change the color of chalk and leaves.   So what started out as a jpg in my computer would soon turn into this lovely masterpiece.

But there is one catch: you’ve got to find a printing company first. And that’s part of the reason I’m so excited to share this post with you! I looked for the best deal for about a week. The prices online varied dramatically. For the size I needed, 30×40, or basically HUGE,

(do you like my fancy way of determining the size?)

I was looking at anywhere from $150-$300. Yowzers. I was hoping to save money by doing a personalized canvas. So I kept digging and that’s when I happened upon www.easycanvasprints.com…… and with a 65% off coupon code, (WHAT! Just “Like” their facebook page or look for coupon codes at retailmenot.com) my artwork would only cost me, get this $61.07!!! I did a little happy dance and ordered on the spot. I did pay a little extra to get it shipped quickly, but I didn’t think too much of it because it was already less than half of the lowest price I was quoted…and that Ladies and Gentlemen is what we call “girl math.” 😉

My canvas arrived in less than a week and was ready to be hung. For $1.49 at checkout, they offer to add mounting hardware for you, um, yes please. I went with the standard .75″ thickness Exhibit A:

Although they do offer 1.5″ and even framing for an additional fee.

Things are starting to come together and even though I’m still eagerly anticipating the day we can paint (I’m thinking a Benjamin Moore grey, there’s only 600 of them, any suggestions?) and of course get new couches and rip up our 20 yr old carpeting, 😀 these little tweaks have made us much more excited and content with our four walls.

That is the same lamp with a new shade, but I’m far from done with him Muahaha…I can’t pull that off can I?  And, hey, do you recognize that piece of art on the far right?

That’s the art that started it all, read more about that here.

Alright guys, that’s all for now, but tune in next time for more about the lamp project, the AMAZING FURNITURE GIFT I WAS TOTALLY BLESSED WITH and, I’ve even got a little recipe coming down the pipeline soon.  Good things are in store, but for now, I’m off to finally celebrate my hubby’s bday!

Until next time…

Meg