Kelsey Mix – Online Editor/Copy Editor
A new year means it’s time for your dorm room to get a new look! At least it does for me, anyway. I always get so bored with my setup. At the end of every fall semester or beginning of every spring semester, I move around some furniture and buy some new pieces for my walls. Well, money’s tight right now, so I decided to make some pieces myself! Here are some of the ideas I came up with.
The first is super easy, but pretty time consuming. Here are the things you’ll need for your magazine clipping silhouette piece:
· A canvas (size is your choice)
· A few magazines of your choosing
· Scissors
· Tape
· Small paint brush
· A pen or pencil
· Plain white paper
· Mod podge or glue
· An Exacto knife (optional)
· Sealant spray (optional)
First, you’ll need to pick the silhouette you want to work with; it can be an animal, a person, an inanimate object, whatever you so choose. Now print that out and cut it out with your scissors and/or Exacto knife depending on how intricate your silhouette is.
Lightly tape that print out to your canvas and trace it using a pen or pencil. Afterwards, remove the stencil and you now have the outline of your silhouette!
Next comes the most tedious part, cutting the magazine. What you want to do is cut out strips from pages of the magazines you chose. The width of the strips is completely up to you as well as how many you wish to cut out. Now you want to place the strips on the silhouette to make sure you have enough. If not, obviously cut out some more.
I tried this a couple times and I found that the easiest way to do it was to brush some mod podge onto a small portion of the silhouette, lay down some of the strips and repeat. Of course use the Exacto knife or scissors to trim the edges, but wait until it’s completely dry to do that.
After that’s finished, you can either use a sealant spray to lock the strips into place, or just brush on another layer of mod podge if you don’t have the spray. And that’s it!
My second project involves fewer materials but more artistic ability, so if you’re up for the challenge then get ready! Here’s what you’ll need:
· Two canvases (sizes of your choice)
· Paint brushes varying in size
· Paint in different colors
· Plain white paper
· Scissors or an Exacto knife
· A pen or pencil
My choice of paint colors was based off of the colors in my room, which are mainly purple and white, so I went with white, black, a lighter purple and a darker purple. I had a vision in my head when walking into Joann Fabrics and I suggest you do the same, or you’ll be like my old self and walk out with the whole store.
I took to Pinterest before planning out the canvases, as I do with any project, and found an idea I could work with. I chose to paint branches and leaves onto each canvas, but instead of using the same colors for both, I decided to make one a light purple background with black branches and the other a dark purple background with white branches. I’m trying to go for some artsy fartsy contrast here.
Now for these canvases, you can either make a stencil by printing out one from the Internet, or just free handing it. I chose to free hand with a pencil. I made the smart decision to draw out the branches and paint them black first and then found myself painting the purple around it, which took longer than it probably should’ve.
Learn from my mistakes everyone! For the light purple canvas, paint the purple first and then draw out the branches. It’ll make your life so much easier. So for the darker purple canvas, what are we going to do? Paint the purple first.
Even though it’s a darker color, it’s much less time consuming to paint white over the dark purple. This required more of a steady hand than I thought, but you just have to add a few more coats of the white than you did for the previous one and you’ll be okay.
Since I’m a perfectionist, I made sure to go over any spots that needed covering and I fixed lines that weren’t quite right. But if you have a steadier hand than I have, you should be all set!
Now you have two ideas that will spruce up that dorm room (or bedroom). What’s great about these DIY’s is that instead of buying a piece at Target or Kohl’s, you can make one yourself for more than half the price! Michael’s and Joann Fabrics always have sales on canvases and paint is always cheap, so there’s no excuse to not get crafty. Good luck!
