Wrapping up Our Flipped Paintings Project 🖼️

We opened up our inbox this week to a question from Terri. She asked us about how she came to get on our list but said she enjoyed a recent email from us.

We came to tell one another about our efforts to build community; Peo Vee, building a place for community to gather around upcycles, and Terri, ways for her neighborhood to come together.

Hearing from you is always special. We’re encouraged to know there are real people on the other end of this newsletter, hopefully some of you exploring upcycling and/or ways to reduce waste in your lives — or others building beautiful communities of your own. If you, too, are taking anything away from reading along here, we hope you’ll share it with us. Thanks Terri!

*(In case you have this same question as Terri, you are receiving emails from us because you opted in when joining our site, or through an ad.)

Our Flipped Painting Take

During the month of May, we explored Pinterest, we found great articles around the web, we scoured Etsy and even ebay looking for art makeover inspiration. After all was said and done, although we loved some of the more colorful flips, we took a stab at something simpler: repairing a broken frame that was previously in a donation box and putting in some new art.

The process:

This frame that once hung on a gallery wall in a hallway had fallen off the wall. The glass remained intact but the frame completely broke apart. Aside from that, the art — a quite cool light-painting photograph — just needed a refresh after years on the wall.

The summary:

It doesn’t take a magnifying glass to see we made some amateur mistakes. We didn’t sand the Bondo smooth enough and it shows in the corners. 🤭 But we did take a piece that was destined for goodwill and made it into something we’re comfortable hanging up again. And we’re pretty happy with that.

One big takeaway for us, these kinds of projects are always intimidating until we just dig in. Even though we were exploring ideas all month, it was hard to figure out exactly what to work on. And starting with practical in the end just made the most sense. How easy is that?

May might be over but our mission to stop buying new home decor and makeover existing pieces is not and we will, try, again.

Next Month’s Project

While each month we focus on a single project, you can participate in any of the Peo Vee projects by creating works of art and sharing within our project threads here. Are we missing one you’d like to see? Tell us by replying to this email.

We’ve got four topics queued up for the month of June - vote for your favorite below.

From the community:

This week, Margot shared that she’s been thinking more about what she’s throwing away. For Margot, it’s still difficult for her to motivate to do anything with the things she tries to divert! Honestly, Margot we can relate.

We started Peo Vee because we were looking for motivation to get started, and we’re just glad that Margot (and hopefully more of you) are thinking more about what you’re throwing away, too. Let’s keep exploring creative ideas.

In this together,