Beautification

I hung some gorgeous art this week. Made by three talented artists ;) Yep, it's our kids!

It's been so hot (still, ugh) that being outside for any length of time isn't in the cards but....sun art is! We did this last year too and I had plans to frame them and hang them over my pantry. The problem was I had a very specific idea of what frames I wanted and I'm not sure they exist ;) Every store we walked through for months I looked at their frames and there were none that satisfied me. Finally, a couple weeks ago, I spotted some at Deals, of all places! They were not what I had in mind all these months but I thought if I don't get those hung soon they'll ruin!

I was right. When we got home I pulled them out and yes they were not in the best of shape. Not totally ruined but not "hang worthy" any more. That was fine because it gave us a reason to do another! And you know what? This year's turned out even better!!

I bought this sun-art kit last year from Amazon. They make it in all different picture sizes so you can easily frame any of them. I choose the 8x10 because I knew exactly where they would go.

Sun art is so easy. I sent the kids out to collect items from the yard that inspired them. While they were doing that, I set us up to make their design at the kitchen table and do the rinsing and drying outside. When they came in, they arranged their items on the special paper:

 The kit comes with a sheet of plexi-glass to put over your design to hold the items still while the sun does it's thing. This one is Nick's:

 It only needs to set in the sun for a few minutes so each child was responsible for watching their art. When the paper looked bleached out they quickly pulled it out from under the glass and put it in a tray of water for processing. When you first pull the paper out, the area where your items where is still dark blue and the rest of the paper has been lightened by the sun. When you put it in water, it reverses! So cool! It's like a little science experiment (which we've done many of this summer!) ;)

 After they dried they sat on our kitchen table for about a week. Why?? Because it was at this point that I remembered how much I hate hanging pictures in groups! It requires so much measuring and leveling....lots of tools like this:

And a big ladder :( It took the kids no more then 20 minutes to make this gorgeous art and it took me a couple of hours to hang it. Not kidding. Of course there were wrong measurements. ugh

But it really was worth it! I love it as much as I thought! Here's Brandon's:

 Nick's:

 Megan's:

 And my display:

I just knew I wanted something blue up there with all that green! Blue/green combo's make me think of the beach no matter what shade they are :) And even though these aren't the frames in my mind, I still love them and think they turned out fantastic!