Summer Mantle Decor

One project that I have been putting off for some time happens to be decorating our fireplace mantle. I don't know why I haven't taken down all of our Easter decorations on our mantle until recently, but maybe that was because I had no idea how we could change it up...that is until now.

 My plan was to keep our mantle decorated the same way from now (that is, once I pull the whole decor all together) until August, so the new look had to be something versatile.

That plan leads me to my post title, "Summer Mantle Decor." Since summer is quickly approaching, decorating with that idea in mind only made sense, so here is what I came up with!

I took some left-over canvas dropcloth and thought of ways to reuse it for a DIY project.

The dropcloth came from another project which you can read more about here.

After the dropcloth was cut to size (that size being big enough to fit into a picture frame) I laid it out on our table.

You can see that once the dropcloth was laid out, there were words peeking through. Can you see them?? 

This is because I had once used this particular fabric to recover our game ottoman, but since I had gone and changed up our ottoman a second time with new fabric, shown in this post, this dropcloth was perfect for what would become my new art work.

I wanted to somehow figure out a way to hide the words peeking through the fabric so on to my next idea!

That idea was to paint stripes on my fabric.

To do this evenly, I carefully placed painter's tape across the fabric and got my other supplies ready.

I went ahead and used some left-over paint for the stripes.

Can you guess what that color ended up being?

Sherwin Williams Sea Salt
The color of the stripes and the same color as our guest bathroom.

After the paint dried, it was time to take off the painter's tape to reveal the new look! 

This was the fun part!  :)

Next, I used an old frame (the same frame that was used for this project) and spray painted it white.

Now I could have just left the new piece like this, but it wasn't lookin' too hot, and needed something more.

So the plan was...somehow, in a neat and artistic kind of way, display "Love & Happiness" on the canvas.

I decided to use some rope and left-over canvas to "hang" pennants.

To do this, I just took some rope that we had lying around the house (I know...maybe it's a little weird that we have stuff like that lying around, but it comes in handy for projects like this)

and draped it across the canvas like so.

Next, I cut out little pennants from the left-over dropcloth and figured out how they were going to lay on the frame.

Once I got that all figured out, I took a Sharpie marker and began writing each letter out one by one-

"Love & Happiness"

Okay, now don't laugh too hard, but YES, I did make my ampersand backwards!!!

Don't worry, I did fix this but my hubby and I had a good laugh about it.  :)

The letters still needed to be attached in a way that it looked like they were hanging off of the rope.

So I used some spray adhesive to attach the letters (seen below) and Voila! my DIY art was coming together.

Our mantle is not completely finished.

I still need to figure out if I am going to keep those jars which are next to the frame, and if so, then I need to figure out what to fill them with.

Any ideas??

The only neat thing I could think of filling them with was an assortment of buttons! Ha!!

 We are pretty pleased with the outcome of our new art, especially since I didn't have to spend a single $ (or pretty penny, for that matter) on this project. So we are very happy about that!!

I would love to know what you think!! Please comment if you can and let me know how you have started decorating for summer.  :)

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