Whatup, yall!   It’s time again for our DIY Monthly Challenge!  (Applause!!!)

This is a challenge where my bloggy friends and I are assigned an item and must simply make something with it!

This month, our item of choice was craft wood.

And I chose balsa simply for ease of use.  For those who don’t know, balsa wood is very soft, so you can cut it with an X-acto knife or scissors.   Totally my type of material.

I have to say that this month’s theme couldn’t have come at a better time.  See, I recently found this canvas art at a thrift store for $6.  And was completely enamored….

I loved the colors and the contrast.  It immediately caught my eye (as did the price tag), so I adopted it and we held hands as we walked off into the sunset I took that badboy home.

The only downside was that it was an unfinished canvas with staples on the sides.  I wanted to make it appear more finished, thus, I decided to use balsa wood to create a frame.   This was SUPER easy to do, but I wanna caution… because balsa wood is so soft, you mainly wanna use it on lightweight items or items that you know wont be bumped around much as it can dent and become misshapen easily (at least mine did).   I learned this pretty quickly as I constructed my frame.  My canvas was borderline too heavy so I had to be careful that I didn’t set it down on our unevenly textured slate floors too firmly.

Anyways, I chose to use four pieces of 1″ x 1/4″ x 36″ balsa wood, which I purchased from Joanne’s.  Then, I simply measured my canvas and cut my balsa wood to size using the straight edge of my ruler as a guide.   I made multiple passes of the knife until I cut entirely through the wood…

Next, I spray painted my balsa with my new fave, Valspar’s metallic spray paint in gold.  Once it was dry,  I simply hot glued it to the canvas…

That’s all it took!   And here’s what I was left with…

Purdy, no?  I just love this art.   Seriously.  I think it was just a homemade piece that somebody created then donated, but it’s genius.

I decided to hang it in the hangout room for now…

I’m not sure if this will be it’s permanent home, as I’d like to add shelving or a picture ledge to this wall eventually, but for now I’m sort of loving it…

Here’s the view from the doorway…

I’d like to change out the grey patterned pillow cover because I feel like it’s a competing a bit with the curtains, but all in all I’m happy with the direction this room is going.  So anyways, this was a really simple and quick project that really packed an impact!   I really couldn’t be happier with how my frame turned out!

Now, check out what my bloggy friends came up with for their awesome projects…