Guest Post: Brooke @ Spruce Your Nest

I'm so excited to introduce you to one of my bloggy friends, Brooke.  She has an amazing tutorial for you today.  Take it away, Brooke.

Hi everyone!  I am so excited to be the Guest Blogger at The Turquoise Piano today!  I am Brooke from Spruce Your Nest...

I am a wife to my wonderful and patient husband and a mother to our two daughters, Charlee (4 years) and Colbie (2 years). I just started blogging in July this year and I am so addicted!  I have always thought I wasn't creative enough, didn't have enough money or have the right home to have my house decorated the way I truly wanted.  I decided this summer that I was going to change my outlook on life completely, especially when it came to our home!  I certainly am not as creative as all the amazing, talented bloggers out there, but that is quite alright...I can take the inspirations that I find on other blogs, Pinterest, and magazines and try my darnest to create something beautiful for our home!

Today I am going to show you a project that is completely out of my comfort zone.  I was inspired by this piece...

I thought this project would be perfect for our master bedroom, since I just completed these tree branch curtain rods.

I wanted to give my own spin on this project and I have been loving the look of book pages being used for projects recently.  I thought it would be a great idea to cover a board with book pages and then draw the dandelion on top of that.  I really wanted to find book pages that pertained to the outdoors in some way and I was having a heck of a time finding the right thing.  Then I came across this!

The "Farmers Almanac" was perfect for this project!  It had so many great articles, which were of course all about nature.  I never knew how fun a "Farmers Almanac" could be!  There are seriously some great articles in there...did you know that they can tell you the best days of the year to start a diet, quit smoking and even when to cut your hair to promote growth!?  I even learned how to garden by moon light ;-)  I might have to pick up a new copy to read, instead of destroy.  Anyhow, back to my project...

I picked up some canvas board, on sale for 2 for $10 bucks at Craft Warehouse, some black paint and spray adhesive and I was ready to go.

I cut out my favorite articles and glued them on to the canvas and came out with this...

Then I got out my paint and paint brush and got to work.  This was very nerve racking for me because I am NOT an artist in any sense of the word!  I was so afraid I was going to botch the whole project right here {trust me I have done that many times}.  Several times while painting I was about to toss out the whole project because I kept comparing myself to the original.  Then when I finished I went to clean the brush and ended up with hands like this!!

A true artist (or anyone with brains} would think about the fact that oil paint does not come off with hot water, or soap for that matter, ha ha!  I was racking my brain trying to figure out how I was going to clean up this situation...then I thought DISH SOAP!  It cuts through grease right!?  Well it worked, after 10 minutes of scrubbing and a half a bottle of Dawn.  LOL.  I still have some black on my hands that I am hoping will come off in the next couple weeks.  So now that you realize that I was not exaggerating on my artistic abilities, I hope you think the project turned out okay...

After holding these up in our bedroom, it was clear that they just didn't look right though.  I was so discouraged.  A couple hours later, I was working on some paperwork in our office, and it hit me!  I could hang these in here!  I have been amping up to makeover our office because right now it is down right boring...What do you think?

Maybe after a couple years of practice I could do something as beautiful as the original, but for now I will accept the fact that painting isn't exactly my forte.

If I haven't scared you off too much, I hope you will hop on over to Spruce Your Nest and check out my blog...I have some fun projects Christmas projects coming up ;-))

(Kelli again)
Brooke, I love it so much!  I think I'm going to rip it off sometime soon.  I even have the oil paints from a class in college (where my teacher told me I'd never go anywhere with painting -- Ha!  I know!).  Thanks for sharing it today!

Go visit Brooke at Spruce Your Nest give her some lovely comments.  Thanks guys!