Boxy Colonial: printables

Friday, September 27, 2013

"The Raven" Halloween Vignette + Fun with Printables

I showed off my Halloween tree the other day, but today I bring you....the rest of the top of the buffet! I've been having fun switching out the stuff on top of the buffet seasonally...it's such a big surface, and I never really knew what to do with it before; having permission to get all theme-y with it makes it easier.

I don't think I ever posted a picture of the whole summer display after I added Brass Hound, so let's revisit that first, shall we?

And now it's like this!

Left to right, we have my halloween tree with tiny banner and the first of several dollar store crows (we're pretending they're ravens, though). Then some candles that I bought and used in last year's Thanksgiving centerpiece.

The spooky books (bookended by Brass Hound) are Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Frankenstein, and a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.

And next up we have the fun with printables parts.

(the black lacy thing is from the Dollar Tree, btw).

I've had these "apothecary-inspired" labels from Country Living in mind since Brooklyn Limestone linked to them last Halloween. So I knew I'd be printing some out this year and started looking for some bottles to go with them a little while back. The widest bottle is from some real life whisky that Dave bought at some point in the past. I told him to save the bottle, even though I didn't remember at the time why I wanted it. Go me. Then I found a little Anchor Hocking bottle for a dollar at the thrift store, and that's holding my curare now. Then I ran out of time for thrifting bottles and picked up the last one for $5 at Hobby Lobby.

The instructions on Country Living say to print the labels out on sticker painter, but I decided to try regular paper and spray adhesive instead to save some money. And it worked great!

The "poisons" are apple cider vinegar and water mixed with a little vanilla. I didn't put anything in the big one since I had neglected to save the lid for it. I guess someone already drank all the belladonna.

And then I printed out these two pictures:

Two gold thrift store frames. For the first one, I just googled images of Edgar Allan Poe and found one that was big enough to look good printed out as an 8 by 10. The raven is from The Biodiversity Heritage Library. They're my go to source for free printables, assuming it's a printable of an animal that I want, which it usually is.

Don't need a raven? Perhaps you could incorporate some spiders into your Halloween decor:

Spider

Maybe a terrifying bat?

Bat

Etc.

The creepy lady is another Dollar Tree purchase. And then there's an old unabridged dictionary, because nothing says scary like a GIANT BOOK with lots of WORDS in it.

On top of said terrifying dictionary is a Target skull from last year and, uhh, a clock. Because, umm....mortality? Sure. And then a couple more candles for good measure.

Oh, and in the top picture you can see that my anatomy flash cards from last year are back up, too.

Okay, so THEN, just when I was writing this post, my friend Kristi stopped by out of nowhere (I mean, she lives right down the street, so it wasn't too startling) and.....gave me an awesome raven! I was all, "where did you get this raven?!" and she said, "the store" and then disappeared into the night. My dogs were barking, and I think her kids were waiting in the car? Anyway. That's all I know. I don't know where to put him yet. Because I just got him. But here he is:

(Bonus! I had to clean part of my kitchen, because I couldn't find a single space to set him for the picture where he wouldn't be surrounded by piles of crap)

Update: Kristi says he's from Ross. Go get one!

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Thursday, February 7, 2013

Free Art! Plants vs. Birds

I've had a link to the Botanicus Digital Library bookmarked for quite awhile now. It's a project from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library to digitize scientific literature and make it available on the internet. Some of the texts they've digitized have really pretty pictures in them. Probably they had loftier goals than beautifying people's walls in mind when they started the project, but, well....when you put free pretty things on the internet, that's what happens, right?

I can't remember where I first came across it, but there are lots of examples out there of people using prints from the site, mostly from this book of plants. I like the plants but, when I decided I wanted some bird prints for my bedroom, I went back to the site to see if they had any to offer. And they do!

There is, for example, The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands: containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants: particularly the forest-trees, shrubs, and other plants, not hitherto described, or very incorrectly figured by authors. Together with their descriptions in English and French. To which are added, observations on the air, soil, and waters: with remarks upon agriculture, grain, pulse, roots, & c.

Catchy title, isn't it?

That one has some lovely birds in it, but this is the one I used. I have no idea how I found it, actually. It doesn't come up when you search "bird" because it's in Dutch (I think). But I have it saved on my hard drive, so I found it somehow. Lucky you, if you're looking for bird pictures and don't know Dutch! A surprising number of the pictures feature birds devouring insects. Eww....maybe educational, but not pretty! But there are plenty of birds untainted by references to their unappealing diets, too.

I can't figure out any way to download individual pictures from the site (nor can I figure out any way to print directly from the site). So, as far as I can tell, what you need to do is download the entire title that you need, then you can open it as a pdf and print your pretty pictures.

I did print out some plates from the plant book for Milo and August's room. I used brown cardstock....not entirely sure how I feel about that choice, but I can always change it out later. These projects, by the way, are what part of our mountain of Ribba frames were for.

They got dandelions, raspberries, and some kind of conifer thing.

And then we moved on to birds. Had I had a girl (ha! right! like that would ever happen!) I was thinking of a vintage-y nursery with birds. But since I'm still the only girl around here, I get the birds (and Dave gets to share them).

I wanted to hang them all in a row above the bed. Dave pointed out that this would be more or less impossible (or at least beyond our humble picture hanging abilities) with the wire hangers that come with the Ribba frames, because getting all the wire exactly the same on each frame would be....tricky at best. So we attached little picture hangers like this to each frame instead (first drilling pilot holes, then nailing them). We talked our moody printer into printing five bird prints out for us (we used white cardstock this time) and put them in the frames.

We used a level and hung up a line of frog tape to help get everything nice and straight. Then figured out the spacing and made marks on the tape for the nails: