I Make All of the Art for my Home with MS Paint

I discovered the DIY awesomeness that is Centsational Girl while staying up one night blog surfing with my sister-in-law Sarah at Myrtle Beach last year. At the time, CG was hosting a giveaway for photograph prints by etsy seller Tim Irving. I really liked his work, especially his photographs of cherries. I loved them!

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I wanted them, really wanted them, but I didn't feel like paying $21 for an 8x8 print. Besides that, there were only the two above that suited my purposes, and I wanted more than that. Regardless, I kept thinking about them. Then, one day, it hit me that I could probably come up with something similar on my own. The results:

Isn't it great?? It's exactly the same as Irving's stuff!!! I love it.

 No? Well who made you the master of fine art?? Snooty spoil sport.

Now I'm going to print it and frame it just to spite you. It will be the best piece of art in my whole house. I'll sign it and it will rake in millions when I die.

Or not.

Here's what I actually did:

One day last summer, I took a bag of cherries, a bowl, and my camera with me on a walk to the park with my son. There's this old, peely, blue shed by the park and I set the cherries up by it and took approximately 150 pictures of cherries. Mostly because I was practicing using the Manual settings on my camera, but also because I'm crazy. Beat that, Tim Irving.

I used some coupons and had my cherry pictures printed in various sizes at Rite Aid. I framed them using old, single pane windows that came out of the Sandwich Shoppe. Overall, I really like the way they turned out. Oh and I got that red clock (which works!) when I went thrifting with Mrs. 5C at the Goodwill Outlet in Richmond -- where they sell things for something like 50 cents PER POUND... It's heavenly!! Well, the prices are heavenly... The place itself is a little sketchy, but the prices really help me overlook the sketchiness.

Those graters are antiques that I picked up at the Yard Crawl in August for $5.

I attached the cherry pictures to the window panes with clear picture corners and a tad bit of tape. I don't even notice it.

This next one is hung up by the back kitchen door. I think it's nice and cheerful!

This last cherry picture is in a frame that I also picked up at the Goodwill Outlet. Along with the red Coca Cola tin. The Goodwill Outlet just has tons and tons of junk dumped in shallow bins. You walk around and dig through the bins until you find what you want. Then you purchase it. Then you wash your hands. A lot.

The frame and the darker cherries actually matches the tone of my cabinets perfectly.

Finally, I hung up some tea plates that I received as a wedding present.

Tea and cherries. It works for me. Especially since I have tea pots and jars of tea sitting all over the counters. Overall, I spent about $25 on all of my kitchen art and they are all larger than the ones that Tim Irving was selling. I win.