Reckless DIY // Photo Board

I've been doing some room redecorating lately.  And by "redecorating," I mean I bought some cheap acrylic paint from Michaels and have been using it to cover everything in sight until I have a collection of coral colored things big enough to help me fully qualify as a typical female right now.  Some of those objects may have been mason jars.  Typical girl level: expert.  But I love my coral mason jars so you can stop making me feel like I'm not unique now!

One of the first pieces of decor in my room to fall victim to Hurricane Coral was this butterfly photo board. 

Kind of sad looking, isn't it?  To be fair to the poor little guy, this picture was taken after
I had ripped it apart and then remembered that I wanted to show you a before picture.  All the pieces are there, but it's in no way functional .  

Dismembered or not, the times were leaving my butterfly in the dust, so I decided it was time for my tired room decor to do a little metamorphosizing. 

Step One:  Clip the wings

The squishy, upholstered part of the board was just glued to the wooden backing, so all I had to do was get really manly about it and rip it right off.  

Once that was done, I scored even more man points by using tools (i.e. sandpaper) to smooth over the rough patches and get rid of any remaining evidence of the butterfly's past.

Step 3:  Make it pretty!

Using a couple other colors of cheap Michael's paint, I whipped up some nice gray for the background.

 And painted the butterfly.  Better already, am I right?    You can't tell from this picture, but I decided to paint the edges coral to make life harder for myself.

I taped and painted some more.  I just guessed at the widths and positions of the stripes - no measuring here!  It also might be cool to do the stripes in a lightly lighter or darker shade of gray for a more subtle effect.

Sanded it to make it look rustic. 

It's sweet of you to pretend that you can tell that I sanded and that it makes the butterfly look a million times better, but you're lying.  Here, try this one:

 I needed a way to attach pictures to this board, so, continuing with the rustic theme, I found a dirty piece of rope in the garage and decided to use that.  I don't know what's up with rustic, worn, country looking things being all trendy all of a sudden, but I can dig it.  It's kind of cool - the older stuff gets, the cooler it is!  Unless, of course, you're a squishy, Dora-colored butterfly board.

You know what else is wonderful?  My family is considerate enough to leave dirty pieces of rope and empty mason jars lying around for my DIY projects.  I can usually guarantee that there will be something like that laying around whenever I need it and say with almost as much certainty that no one will miss it if it becomes a part of a new piece of art or bookshelf or something.  Thanks, family!

So, after I found that dirty piece of rope, I found a couple sections I liked, knotted them off, applied an obscenely liberal amount of Elmer's glue, and stuck them on.  Badda bing, badda boom.

The only problem with obscene amounts of Elmer's glue is that those pools take a lifetime to dry, so I distracted myself until it was ready.  I stuck colorful paper clips through the ropes to hang my pictures on, but you could use clothes pins if you want to be even more rustic/country - ish.

Mr. Butterfly is now looking good enough to hang out with mementos of graduations and dances past,  wise words, pictures, and the little scrapbooky things I made just for the sake of this picture so you'd better love them.  I'd say this makeover was a success!

Next on Reckless Stewart:  Coral mason jars.  Betcha didn't see that one coming!

Have a fantastic Tuesday!  Thanks so much for stopping by!

Allie

P.S.  Have you done any cool DIYs lately?  And what can I do with the rest of this coral paint?  Also, as long as you're here being wonderful, check out this post from my new blog crush, Gina Alyse!  It's all about creativity and adventure and living boldly, and it is so, so cool!