THE $15 FALL DECOR CHALLENGE REVEALED

Wow, I had a really hard time with this one. For one, it was somewhat hard to spend my $15 at the Dollar Store since our local franchise sucks. I ended up doing my shopping at Tuesday Morning, TJ Maxx's clearance aisles, the grocery store, and my house. I really failed with the specific guidelines of the challenge, but I *think* I like what I came up with and will probably keep it until Christmas.

After I posted the intro to the challenge on Monday, I found an even more updated pic of our fireplace mantle, from after I painted it white.

When I first put everything together last night I felt like something was missing. I had purchased a bunch of sunflowers from Trader Joe's and while the bright yellow mimicked the yellow I had from the lemons, something just wasn't right about it. Then I put only one in a white vase and I liked that better, but I still didn't love it. Sitting at my desk I looked out the window and inspiration hit me - fig leaves!

Nine dollars of my budget went to the little ceramic pumpkins on the right. I used about 3/4 of the jar of popcorn that I bought for myself. And I spray painted the formerly wood frame an antique white that I had purchased for a different project (that I never did).

The little boy in this picture is my Grandpa on his first trip to the snow. I think he was like four years old.

As I looked at the vignette there was something about the photo from Florence that didn't quite mesh for me. I was going to paint a picture of a gingko leaf but (1) I'm lazy and (2) not that talented, so instead I ended up printing a picture of a squirrel from a website that has vintage images for printing. I kind of love squirrels. They crack me up. I had a really pretty piece of watercolor paper left over from some Christmas cards I made several years ago and the image printed really lovely on the textured paper. I'm very happy with how this frame makeover turned out. I might even rough up the paint a little bit to give it an even more rustic quality.

 

So there you have it. My $15 Fall Challenge. Or my attempt thereof.

Check out the reveals for the other lovely ladies that participated:

Martina at Adventures in Building Beauty

Michelle at Sweet Suite 10

Amanda at Living in a Green Room

Abby at The Crabby Fox

Casey at Waffling Blog

Amelia at House Pretty