Gettin' Crafty!

So I've had a project on my mind for over a year now, but just haven't gotten to it yet.  

For those of you who don't know, this is my classroom.  I've posted pictures before, but you might have forgotten.  I haven't been there in so long, I feel like I've forgotten what it looks like, too!  This was taken after I'd pretty much assembled everything I had and put it all up on the walls.  I've collected more things throughout the year, but one thing is still pretty bare.

See that purple wall?  I'd like to put something on it.  Something cool (because I want my room to look awesome).  Something I made (because I'm cheap).  Something that hangs (because the stupid paint peels off the stupid cinder blocks EVEN THOUGH I bought the most expensive paint...old, dry blocks!).  Luckily, I have four screws sticking out of the blocks that someone kindly left for me.  Perfect!

I was looking at a friend's blog about a year ago or so and saw that she had taken old picture frames and covered them with fabric.  Some hot gluing and they looked great!  Simple enough, and I have plenty of frames from old 4-H projects and such that I'm never going to use in my house.  Yesterday I went to JoAnn's to get some fabric.

I chose this:

I liked this because it was simple but striking, bringing in my two main colors but also others.  I didn't need this much fabric, but I bought extra just in case I decided to use some for something else.  Plus, it was a steal!  Originally $19.99 per yard but marked down to $9.99.  Add to that my 20% off coupon, and I got 3 yards for less than $25!

So I assembled some frames with Keebler's help:

Although my friend covered hers by wrapping the fabric around the back and gluing, I wanted to do something different to show the frames.  I decided to cut a little more precisely and use our staple gun to staple the fabric across the back of the frame.  

You have to make sure, of course, that your frame is not too shallow to where you split it with the impact of the staples.  I did this on one of the frames by not watching where the staples were going and accidentally stapled my frame to the countertop.  Oops.  But don't worry, countertop is fine and I filled in the split with some brown marker, so you can't even tell.

After I ran out of staples and had to go get more (making this a longer process than it needed to be), I ended up with these beauties:

They're not completely perfect due to either my stapling skills or my cutting, but I'm okay with that.  I'm sure they'll look great on my wall come August!  I'm not super crafty, but this was a nice, small project that was relatively inexpensive and made me feel good about what little abilities I do have.