Repaint, Reuse, Recycle

As we continue the living room decorating saga, this may be one of my favorite projects thus far.  The best part--it cost me under $10!  Gasp!  How, you ask?  Simple.  Just repaint, reuse and recycle your frames and art!  Okay okay, enough talk.  Let's see some action!

Meet our IKEA frames that we brought with us from our old apartment:

Back in the day, they cost us around $15 each and we scooped up 3 of them.  The art was sold separate, but if I remember correctly, it wasn't all that expensive either.  Anyhoo, the "beachy" theme isn't exactly what I'm going for in the new digs but I hated to let these babies go to waste.  So, I removed the art.  Easy enough, right?  One down, two more to go!

But why stop there?  I'm on a "paint everything white that you can get your hands on" kind of kick, which the Mr. isn't a huge fan of by the way (he started taking his valuables with him to work so he doesn't have any surprises when he gets home), so why not repaint these?  I made a quick trip to Lowe's and picked up my new best friend:

Then, I went to town.  Once I had all three frames painted, I had to figure out what I was going to put in them.  Top secret tip--go to your local Bath & Body Works or Victoria's Secret and ask for old marketing or props.  They give them out at the end of the season, so if you see something you like, talk to the manager and they'll contact you when they don't need them anymore.  Pretty sweet, I know.  I scored these a couple years back, fo' FREE, when I worked for BBW and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them.

 But since I only needed three, I decided on these:

The greens and yellows because they are already present in the room and the lavender because of the grey tones and I was wanting to pull more of them into my accessories.  After I had a completed frame, I went ahead and added the art so I could see the total package.  It was good.

Once I had them all put together, I got out the tools and began plotting the placement like we did here and here for our gallery wall.

The Mr. helped me hang them and ensured they were level.  And, ta-da!

I love that the color and weight balances with the white bookshelves and gallery wall (here and here)  on the opposite side of the room.

Alright, let's break it down...

frames:  recycled from old abode=free

art:  recycled from Bath & Body Works=free

paint: 2 cans of white spraypaint=$6

TOTAL: $6

Go ahead, look around and see what you can do with the stuff that just doesn't seem to tickle your fancy anymore!