musings, mutterings, and creative muddle. . .





Wednesday, April 18, 2012

What's on Your Wall? Wall Art!

Remember my newly decorated guest room from a few weeks ago?  And those cool (or at least I really think so) prints above the daybed?  I promised a closer look and a little more detail on how they came to be. . .


It all started with me wanting sea oriented pictures above the bed. A whole long row of nine of them, to be exact.  I simply couldn't find what I was looking for. . . So, doggone it - I was just going to have to make my own! 

Nothing very unusual for me. . . Seriously. The things I put on the wall. . . It's more than just the usual paintings (in my case, I'm lucky to have a daughter who's an artist), plaques, photographs (I snap 'em and/or 'pixel-paint' to make them extra-special), or otherwise pretty-darned-cool wall art.


Sometimes, well, I just can't.quite.BUY.precisely. what I'm looking for. . . That's when the image in my head, becomes an idea, a process to be implemented, created, and (usually) enjoyed.

I've done such things as fill those niftiest of nifty shadow box frames with seashells. . .



and some really cool clay-like keys dear daughter made in high school.



Or what about this shelf-depth frame that was intended as a dramatic stage for three small photos and, instead, I put grocery sack paper in the slots, then hot glued in some of the most awesome hand-blown glass cherries ever?



And framing the license tag from my Grandpa's first farm truck for the wall? SURE!  Why not? (Yes. You can see the very edge of a black-trimmed white porcelainware pan to the right. . . I have a fairly extensive collection that I display in a wide variety of ways. . . another blog, perhaps?)



As an avid 'repurposer' I come across some of the most beautifully patterned tableware. Without any specific plan, I started acquiring interesting pieces, but was most stumped when it came to how to display my growing collection. I tried just tossing them all in a cool over-sized bowl. . . scattering them on a tray, leaning different ones pell-mell in a hurricane. . . Then it came to me: Wall Art!

Why not frame them?


On vintage-y looking fabric (I soaked it in strong coffee and rubbed the wet, used coffee ground into areas for a more rustic effect)?


In black frames?


And that's what I did. . .


Even did the same thing with a skeleton key I found in our house. . .


So what about those sea creature prints above the guest bed?


Well. . . I didn't think printing on coffee-stained fabric was probably a very viable idea. I wasn't overly pleased with the stained paper I created. . . just wasn't quite what I had in mind. . . but I had come across an old book while cleaning out the guest bedroom (in preparation for its make-over) that I thought had perfectly age-hued pages.


Next I had to find the 'just right' images. . .  A couple were clip arts from The Graphics Fairy (I have SO many clips from Karen - love love love). Many came from photographs shot and collected by Petr Kratochvil, others came from my own photo and clip art collection.

So I started with a plain ol' photo,

then I isolated the object, removed the background and, using my image-editing program, enhanced, re-colorized, and over-saturated to make it the right shade of blue
Placed a carefully removed page from my book into the printer feed


Printed, mounted it into a frame

And repeated *nine* times. . .


Perfect. I love it when my imagination becomes reality - in a beautifully good way. . .

Have a Wall Art kind of day ~

Robin Z

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