Hello! (And squares on a wall)

Hello! My name is Hannah.

This is me.

There are a few things you should know about me...

1. I am SO excited to be a co-author on Poppies at Play!

2. I am a stay at home mom of three little boys.

3. I love green and blue, my sander, spray paint, patterned scrapbook paper, sandwiches and limeades from Sonic.

4. I hate hanging things on the wall (not having things hanging on the wall, just the actual act of hanging them on the wall), scrapbooking, mowing the lawn and scary movies.

5. I am inspired by people who can see a way to turn trash into treasure (ahem, Andy). It's a skill I'm trying to develop. I love the idea of a house filled with completely mismatched pieces that have been slowly collected over time, redone and given a new life.

(Thanks for reading this post. Really, if you're actually reading all this stuff where I talk about myself, you're nice and I like you. Thanks! )

6. I really enjoy all kinds of craftiness, but....and here's the important part....

I. am. an. amateur.

Every time I have a project, I go through all kinds of wrongs before I get to the right. And I learn so much every time. I figure the best thing I can do here is show you what I've been doing and tell you what I learned while I did it.

Alright. Enough about me. Here is what you really came here for. Look at these cute squares on my baby boy's wall...

I got this idea from this fun home decor blog. I thought it would be so cute to do this with some vintage boy paper and fill an empty wall in my house. I was so excited to go pick out the scrapbook paper to use for the squares. I should have done a closeup on some of the awesome papers I chose...top middle is ice cream cones and Popsicles, middle is hopscotch, middle left are airplanes, bottom right is fish. I love them!

I went to Lowe's for the wood, told a lady what I was looking for (nine 12 inch squares) and she found enough 1/2" plywood in their scrap pile by the cutter. That'll work! She cut it for me and charged me $2.50 total. Apparently, scrap wood is a good way to go when you can.

I spray painted black around the edges and then used spray adhesive to stick on the paper. I then used my sander to sand just a tiny bit around the edges.

And that was it! So easy and fast!! The hardest part was hanging them on the wall (because I hate doing that, remember? It gives me such anxiety! Is it too high? too low? left? right? is it straight? Now juggle the level, hammer and nail and don't drop the square..ahhh!)

I just nailed the squares right into the wall. This was cheap and easy and I love the look in my little boy's room!

Things I learned...

-Spray the wood and the back of the paper with adhesive. And the can of adhesive also says to wait a minute before sticking it down.I missed this part of the instructions and it didn't work very well. I've had edges coming up on almost all of the squares that I've had to re-glue down. Maybe the spray adhesive would have been good enough if I'd done it right.

- My new cheapo camera shows the date on the side even when you upload a picture. And it's the wrong date. I guess I need to go figure out how to take that off.

Until next Monday....