Brightest Young Things

Now that most everyone is back and settled in from the holidays, we've got about a week before all hell breaks loose again in DC. If you're at all like me, you will most likely want to barricade yourself inside your house during Inauguration. Here's a few projects you can work on when you're not stockpiling canned goods or polishing your shotgun.

Reuse things from the holidays

Here's a few simple ideas that take advantage of your leftovers from the holidays as well as some of the post holiday sales still going on.

This one was simple, yet classy. Take a cheap frame ($3.99 at Target), and a piece of leftover wrapping paper. I suggest a wrapping paper that isn't too Christmas-y... i.e. no "Merry Christmas" type or that sort of thing. This pattern was from the $3.99 Target gift-wrap, probably available on sale now for $0.99. That's it, all you are doing is framing a piece of wrapping paper. Who would have thought for the price of the frame you could have a pretty nice piece of wall art. I know, I know, I'm obsessed with putting things in frames. Well kids, it's only going to get worse. When in doubt, put it in a frame.

Continuing on this theme, the other day I picked up some snazzy cloth napkins at the Pottery Barn. Yeah, I know, crazy. I blame this purchase on two things 1) I had to walk through Pottery Barn to get out to the street, and 2) the napkins were on sale for a little over a buck marked down from $9. While holiday themed, as you can see, these are not in your face Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Put this puppy in a frame, and boom you've got something that looks nice and is fairly unique.

They also sold this fabric on rolls, though I don't recall the sale price of those. If you hurry, there might be some left. I found this at the Pottery Barn in Friendship Heights. The fabric on rolls would be great for sprucing up that really cheap bookshelf you bought from Ikea. And yes, I know you have one, because we all have one. It costs like $10 and is cheap and looks cheap, but for pretty cheap you really spruce it up.

Buy some funky fabric, enough to fit on the backing of the bookshelf. If you have the super-cheap Ikea bookshelf, the backing is simply made out of some sort of plastic. If you have the nicer version, it'll be made out of wood. Remove the backing, and attach the fabric. If you've got the plastic backing, you can just use staples along the edge. If you've got the wood one, you could still use staples (though you'd need to use a staple gun) or you could tape or glue it.

This is classy looking, and will distract those people judging your book collection.

From the $0.25 bin at the Library

So, if you're into doing things cheap, then you've probably got a library card. I was at the MLK Library the other day, and noticed a cart with old issues of National Geographic for $0.25 each. I took home eight old issues, some from the 1940s.

These issues have all sorts of treasures. Treasures just screaming to be framed! Check out those ads, for subway cars and the Union Pacific. For a quarter each! Cut out one of these pages and frame it in a $2.00 frame and you've got something you could sell on Etsy or something for $20+. That's huge profit margins.

That's it for this week, I promise no more advocating frames for a few weeks. Until I write the how to make your own frames article.