Photographs: My favorite art

Well hello all! Can you believe it’s almost the weekend already? I swear this week has absolutely flown by.

I got one project completed this week that I’m really, really happy with. (GLEE!!) And I did most of it with what I had, which is always a bonus in my book. :)

When it comes to filling wall space, we don’t have much real art in our home. OK, let me rephrase…we have ZERO real art. :)

An outlet Ballard Designs piece is the closest we get to actual art. Instead I’ve fill our walls with a bunch of molding and lots and LOTS of pictures. Bunches. Gaggles. :)

Photographs are my very favorite art. They’re cheap (most of the time I print them out at home and almost all frames are from Goodwill), they’re easy, and they add a personal touch to our home that no art could.

I’ve grouped framed pictures in almost every room in our house. The playroom:

See that squishy face? That’s my baby:

The cowboy is my Dad as a boy. I could die. :)

That wall of photos is getting a redo soon. I may move the shelves around and am definitely adding new photos throughout.

I filled an empty wall on our stairwell with photos as well:

Don’t worry…the mice are gone. As much as I HEART them. :)

And I used photos in a wall in our bedroom as well:

You can see they’re usually hung willy nilly. I like the scattered look when it comes to framed photos, which is REALLY weird for me, since I’m the symmetrical queen.

When I started the impromptu redo of the living room, I knew exactly how I wanted to fill the space between the windows. I took at look at the colorway on the fabric I picked for the drapes for some color inspiration:

I big fat LOVE when they do that! It makes it so easy to work with. You’ll notice there’s 16 different colors in this beautiful fabric, which gave me plenty of options to choose from.

And it turns out, I already had exactly what I needed. :) About eight months ago, I started collecting frames at Goodwill for an idea I had for the living room. I even spray painted them months ago – I bet it’s been about six months.

But when I tried my idea in the room, I didn’t care for it (more about that later!) and left it sitting for months. And wouldn’t you know it – the colors I had already painted the frames worked perfectly for my new idea:

I love using what I have. And I love it even more when the spray painting is already done. ;)

I started finishing off this spot with a Goodwill lamp – it was blinding me with it’s brassiness at the store, but I knew it could be a beauty:

Doesn’t it have the loveliest curves? Oh, she’s so darn pretty. :) I sprayed it with a primer and then a couple coats of Rustoleum’s Heirloom White. I had the shade, and added a ribbon from my stash around the bottom. I love how the color in the ribbon is an exact match to the light brown in the drapes.

That is what I’m talkin’ about! Totally by accident and it worked great. Whooeee!!

I kept the accessories in the HomeGoods tray simple. I didn’t want them to compete with the art:

The rattan ball was a couple bucks on clearance at Pottery Barn years ago. The books are those faux books, and I covered them with a linen fabric last year.

The art is my very favorite part! They’re all shots I took (with my point and shoot camera by the way) last year:

I used a few of the wildflower shots (from our neighborhood) and a leaf from a hike last fall. I was going for bright colors that worked with the drapes. LOVE.

I don’t even use mats most of the time – I just cut out white paper and use spray adhesive or double-sided tape to mount the photos right on top. You can’t even tell they’re not the real thing!

Like I mentioned, I usually print my photos out at home (and usually just on basic printer paper), but this time I splurged a little bit. I uploaded them to Walgreens.com and picked them up an hour later.

Uhh, hello?? How have I missed this fabulousness all these years? I knew about it, just never did it. And I’m now hooked. I think the five pictures were about $12.

The new art is the perfect finishing touch for that part of the room:

I’m so in love with it. I smile every time I walk in this space.

There’s still much I want to do – not sure that mirror is staying on the right (it’s a little small). You’ll see a peek of a Goodwill coffee table that’s waiting for a redo. And there’s pillows to make as well. (I am going to attempt to make a pillow with a zipper people.)  ;)

And if you look close enough, you’ll notice the drapes are different lengths, still aren’t hemmed (will they ever be? I don’t know, I don’t know!), and there’s a few holes in the wall I need to paint over.

I was able cover most of those with the frames though. YESSSS.

Because you know I’m a lovah of before and after pics, let’s check out the difference so far, shall we? The dark before:

And with new drapes and a little reworking, the now:

BOO.yah. LOVE it.

I know many of you are loving the fabric as much as I am – I got it from Calico Corners and it’s P. Kaufman fabric:

I’m trying to find it online and haven’t come up with anything yet. I’ll let you know if I find a link!

So, do you use photos as art in your home? I know one thing – if we ever sell our house, the realtor is going to have a heyday with us. Aren’t you supposed to depersonalize? We’ll have LOTS of empty walls! Or they’ll just have to deal.  :)

P.S. The lamp shade on the side table was a vintage find years ago. Isn’t is perfect?

P.P.S. The spray paints/colors I used on the frames were Rustoleum’s Heirloom White and Espresso and Valspar’s Everglade.

Filling wall space (in a big boy room)

Helloooo there! Hope you had a great weekend! I am SO excited to show you the progress on the Bub’s room! It is coming together so beautifully, I’m just thrilled.

There are a few toughies when decorating any space, and one of those is what to do with long, empty wall space. They are everywhere, obviously. Above sofas, down hallways, transitional areas from room to room.

When it comes to these empty spaces, I usually go to my tried and true -- molding of any kind. Why? It’s cheap. It’s easy. And it creates BIG impact.

The Bub’s room is a long one – with two large expanses of wall. When I decided on the navy blue paint, I knew I wanted to keep the room bright by breaking up the dark color with art spaces on the long walls.

When I painted the walls a few weeks ago, I left some of the wall unpainted. On one wall, my idea was do to a series of three prints, framed out with molding. To start, I cut out paper the size of the frames to figure out my measurements for the molding:

Ignore the one that fell off the wall, and the one on the way off. Just imagine three, K? :)

Once I had my measurements, I started cutting and nailing, my two favorite things to do. Nothing quite like using a compound miter saw and a nail gun to make your day. (I’m a freakedy freak!)

The result was this:

I usually go to Lowe’s for molding, but Home Depot has a great selection too. I grabbed this stuff for about $4 (for eight feet) – that is a great deal. It’s an mdf composite. Cuts like buttah. But everything cuts like buttah with my saw. (Swoon…)

For the art, I ordered vintage airplane prints from art.com. They were all 9x13 and were only $3.99 each! Awesome!

Because of the odd shape, I knew I’d have to have mats cut (expensive!), try to cut them myself (annoying!) or just do what I always do, and do a fake mat. I started by trimming off the white edge around each print:

I just use my level to get a straight edge. Works great every time – just make sure to put a lot of pressure on the level so it doesn’t move around when you cut.

The mats that came in my Target frames were already white, so they would have looked great as is, but I wanted to tie in the wallpaper I used in the room. I used spray adhesive on the mat, covered it with the wallpaper, then used double stick tape to stick the art directly to the mat:

The result? LURVE:

I painted the insides of each box with white semi gloss paint. I usually use high gloss for a project like this, but I got the Behr Ultra (paint and primer in one) for other areas in the room so I wanted this to match to the other spots (those are coming soon!)

I was initially going to do white frames, but I realized the white frame would get lost on the wall. I found these nickel frames at Target for $20 each – a lot for me – but they work perfectly with other accents in the room.

I hung them on the wall and hot glued the ribbon so it looks like they are hanging – I’ve found if you actually try to hang a frame from a ribbon, it can stick out from the wall a bit.

I don’t know if you can tell, but my favorite little detail on this wall is the knobs – they were $2 each at Hob Lob and spell out “FLY”:

I just stuck the screw right into the wall! If you can’t tell by now – the theme of this big boy room is airplanes. :)

On the wall above his bed, I had a similar project in mind – I was going to take pictures of a vintage airplane and frame them out in a big molding box on the wall.

But I couldn’t find the vintage airplane that I was seeing in my head. :) And, I kind of forgot that Stink Eye Sister found an awesome airplane print for the Bub and gave it to us at Christmas:

So I knew I had to use it or she would totally pull the stink eye on me and the stink eye is totally annoying. I absolutely LOVE the print – we adore New York City and can’t wait to take the Bub there, so the photo really is special to us.

I just framed it out on the wall and put a piece of acrylic over it (from one of the big poster frames):

Then I painted it all out in the semi gloss white:It is soooo freaking cool. The acrylic does slide out, so we can change this out eventually if we want. I LOVE how it looks built in. And I love how it’s not what I initially planned but I love it so much more.

So two huge, long walls are now filled. The total cost of the molding for both walls was about $40. My time was the investment. And there is no room I’d rather invest in.  ;)

Before:

Classic navy blue and white afters:

I adore them. And I can’t wait to show you the next step in the room. :)

 

Check out my latest advertiser!

Filling wall space (in a big boy room)

Helloooo there! Hope you had a great weekend! I am SO excited to show you the progress on the Bub’s room! It is coming together so beautifully, I’m just thrilled.

There are a few toughies when decorating any space, and one of those is what to do with long, empty wall space. They are everywhere, obviously. Above sofas, down hallways, transitional areas from room to room.

When it comes to these empty spaces, I usually go to my tried and true -- molding of any kind. Why? It’s cheap. It’s easy. And it creates BIG impact.

The Bub’s room is a long one – with two large expanses of wall. When I decided on the navy blue paint, I knew I wanted to keep the room bright by breaking up the dark color with art spaces on the long walls.

When I painted the walls a few weeks ago, I left some of the wall unpainted. On one wall, my idea was do to a series of three prints, framed out with molding. To start, I cut out paper the size of the frames to figure out my measurements for the molding:

Ignore the one that fell off the wall, and the one on the way off. Just imagine three, K? :)

Once I had my measurements, I started cutting and nailing, my two favorite things to do. Nothing quite like using a compound miter saw and a nail gun to make your day. (I’m a freakedy freak!)

The result was this:

I usually go to Lowe’s for molding, but Home Depot has a great selection too. I grabbed this stuff for about $4 (for eight feet) – that is a great deal. It’s an mdf composite. Cuts like buttah. But everything cuts like buttah with my saw. (Swoon…)

For the art, I ordered vintage airplane prints from art.com. They were all 9x13 and were only $3.99 each! Awesome!

Because of the odd shape, I knew I’d have to have mats cut (expensive!), try to cut them myself (annoying!) or just do what I always do, and do a fake mat. I started by trimming off the white edge around each print:

I just use my level to get a straight edge. Works great every time – just make sure to put a lot of pressure on the level so it doesn’t move around when you cut.

The mats that came in my Target frames were already white, so they would have looked great as is, but I wanted to tie in the wallpaper I used in the room. I used spray adhesive on the mat, covered it with the wallpaper, then used double stick tape to stick the art directly to the mat:

The result? LURVE:

I painted the insides of each box with white semi gloss paint. I usually use high gloss for a project like this, but I got the Behr Ultra (paint and primer in one) for other areas in the room so I wanted this to match to the other spots (those are coming soon!)

I was initially going to do white frames, but I realized the white frame would get lost on the wall. I found these nickel frames at Target for $20 each – a lot for me – but they work perfectly with other accents in the room.

I hung them on the wall and hot glued the ribbon so it looks like they are hanging – I’ve found if you actually try to hang a frame from a ribbon, it can stick out from the wall a bit.

I don’t know if you can tell, but my favorite little detail on this wall is the knobs – they were $2 each at Hob Lob and spell out “FLY”:

I just stuck the screw right into the wall! If you can’t tell by now – the theme of this big boy room is airplanes. :)

On the wall above his bed, I had a similar project in mind – I was going to take pictures of a vintage airplane and frame them out in a big molding box on the wall.

But I couldn’t find the vintage airplane that I was seeing in my head. :) And, I kind of forgot that Stink Eye Sister found an awesome airplane print for the Bub and gave it to us at Christmas:

So I knew I had to use it or she would totally pull the stink eye on me and the stink eye is totally annoying. I absolutely LOVE the print – we adore New York City and can’t wait to take the Bub there, so the photo really is special to us.

I just framed it out on the wall and put a piece of acrylic over it (from one of the big poster frames):

Then I painted it all out in the semi gloss white:It is soooo freaking cool. The acrylic does slide out, so we can change this out eventually if we want. I LOVE how it looks built in. And I love how it’s not what I initially planned but I love it so much more.

So two huge, long walls are now filled. The total cost of the molding for both walls was about $40. My time was the investment. And there is no room I’d rather invest in.  ;)

Before:

Classic navy blue and white afters:

I adore them. And I can’t wait to show you the next step in the room. :)

 

Check out my latest advertiser!

Vinyl Love

  Are you a vinyl luva like me? I think the vinyl wording and designs that have been gaining popularity over the past few years are just so FUN to use around the house.

Recently I’ve been wondering if they are here to stay, and then I saw two episodes of Divine Design where Candice Olsen used vinyl on the walls – and I figured I’m good to go for quite a while. I mean, if Candice is using it…I’m safe. ;)

I know you can easily go overboard with the stuff – using a bit of restraint with vinyl on your walls is not a bad thing. But there is such a huge variety of it out there now, it’s so easy to make it work with your decor. And it’s not only words anymore – the vinyl I see now is more like art, for sure!

What I love about vinyl is anyone can use it, in just about any room. Even if you rent, you can put it up, then just peel it off when you move. Or, you can mount it on a piece of wood and move it around as you wish. I’ve been doing that more and more -- if I think I’ll ever want to reuse one somewhere else, I find ways to make it movable.

The giraffe growth chart from Uppercase Living is too cute! I just love it, and I wanted to make sure it could go with us if we ever left this house:

You’ll notice there’s still not one measurement on there. ;) Why have a growth chart with no “growth” on it?

Because it’s CAUTE! That’s why.

I have a few phrases on our walls that are the perfect finishing touch – I’ve shown  you the photo wall on our staircase:

The playroom has a sweet saying I just love:

And the vinyl saying in our laundry room almost makes laundry fun:

OK, I’m totally lying. Nothing makes laundry fun. NOTHING. (By the way, all three of those sayings were from Uppercase Living.)

I got the saying for our black door in the garage from a local signage shop:

It was super cheap and FAST. I am insanely, ridiculously impatient and this one was right up my alley.

OH! I almost forgot the front door! It’s a custom Welcome I had made: Obviously, this picture is from fall. But I love the porch during that season, so there. you. go.

But my latest vinyl find is one of my favorites. My friend Krista is just as in love with this stuff as I am, and she found an adorable vinyl clock on clearance at Stein Mart ($15 I think?) a couple months ago. I had to go get one. Had. to.

I could not resist it. I mean, seriously. It has the cutest little animals you ever did see:

Could you just die? Because it was so cute, I wanted to make sure we could keep this one and move it around if needed.

I got a two by two foot board at Lowe’s for $5, and had them cut it down just a bit to 22 by 22 inches. I painted it white, and once it had cured, we started putting the vinyl on:

This one was a bit more involved than most – you have to kind of layer the pieces. But the Bub helped me decide where to place the animals and we had fun doing it. ;)

Then I finished it off by framing it out with some scraps of molding from the garage:

(I didn’t even fill the holes. Don’t tell.)

I adore it!

  

There is a wall in our loft/hall/playroom that has always called out for something, but the light switch made most items look odd up so high.

For some reason, I think this works perfectly, even up higher than I would normally put it:

Probably because it is so gosh darn cute!! Even hubby thinks it’s totally adorable. :)

(Oh yeah. I see you, you ugly brass knob. Your days are numbered. For real this time.)

So what do you think? Do you have vinyl in your home? Do you have a favorite?

Check out two of my advertisers, Single Stone Studios (we have a great giveaway coming up soon) and EAD Designs for some fantastic vinyl art!

I will announce the winner of the HomeGoods gift card tomorrow! (You can keep entering until noon.)

P.S. I believe I said “vinyl” about 82 times.