She Will Be Inspired by a Birthday Present

My birthday was at the end of January and as always, it was a great day!  I received many thoughtful and well appreciated gifts, but one stuck out in particular.  My sister-in-law found this fun picture at Hobby Lobby and thought of me!

 The color scheme is a perfect fit with our style, but we had a hard time deciding where to put it.  Matt finally came up with the idea of hanging it on the wall soffit above the sink.

My photography skills are severely lacking so the lighting and viewpoint is awful, but the picture does look great above the sink.  Unfortunately, this left us with a blank soffit above the stove and fridge!  What is a Pinterest fan to do?  Fortunately, I did remember some fun kitchen printables I saw on Pinterest from Over the Big Moon

As you know from my last Valentine's Day project, our printer is NOT up to any heavy duty printing, so this was not an option.  Since I love my silhouette and am always looking for a new way to use it, I thought this would be a great project.

I knew I wanted to do a layered effect with three different colored papers that matched my new picture and white on the bottom.  Off to Michaels I went and I was extremely luck in finding a green, navy blue, and bright orange that worked perfectly with my design aesthetic and the picture.  I also stopped at Meijer's to pick up three $5 white frames.  The wall soffit is only 12 inches high, so we wanted something with a small frame.

I decided to start with the "Be Grateful" sign as I thought this would be the most difficult, but was also my favorite of the three phrases.  We had already decided that we wanted the pictures to be horizontal instead of vertical to match the original picture, so we knew the layout would be different than the original.  The project had not been going on too long before I realized that there was no way to use a holed grater and NOT have to glue tons of little dots.  Since I have zero patience for that type of thing, I decided to go a different route.  Some graters out there use lines so you can grate whole slices of cheese, but lines wouldn't be fun to look at so I pulled out the zig zag border from the Silhouette library and came up with the sign below.

Even though it doesn't have the holes, you still get the grater effect.  Below is a wonky view of the sign with the $5 white frame.

The next sign I worked on was Roll With It.  I used a different roller pattern and layout, but again I think it turned out really well.

Neither Matt nor I loved the Spoonful of Sugar phrase, so we immediately started to brainstorm different ideas.  It was Matt who eventually suggested "Variety is the Spice of Life" and using pictures of different types of peppers.  I liked the idea, but went one step further and suggested "Spice Up Your Life" with just one pepper.  I told Matt my reasoning behind this change was that it would be more consistent with the other pictures as it used just one picture and was still an action, if you will, instead of a phrase (i wanted to call this parallel structure, but I don't think that is the right word here)  While this is true, "Spice Up Your Life" is also a Spice Girls song and I LOVE the Spice Girls!

How amazing is this!  I get to use a Spice Girl song title to decorate my kitchen and it gets approval from my husband (granted, he really does not have a clue)!

The final product turned out great and I love the splash of color it adds to the otherwise drab kitchen.  I'm working on "spicing" up the kitchen a little more, but that may still take some time.  In the meantime, I also purchased fabric to make window cornices and it turns out the colors in the fabric perfectly match the colors in the pictures I just created for the kitchen!  I didn't even plan it!  It's fate, kismet, destiny!

If you are interested in making these designs for your own kitchen using the Silhouette, please do not hesitate to reach out to me and I would be happy to share my templates.  I also created one with a knife that read "Stay Sharp," but it didn't make the cut (hahahahahah).  Seriously, I crack myself up!

Lori