Wall Collages

I love Pinterest.  A few days after we had our family pictures done, I came across this:

 

and I fell in love with it.  Especially the couch, but there’s nothing I can do about that right now.  Here’s the wall collage I had in my front room:

Please note the cute kids in the corner playing a game on the laptop.  That’s #4 and #5.  Love them.  Oh yeah.  Back to the wall collage:

So, this is what I had.  I had these pictures coming:

Aren’t my kids gorgeous?  Swoon…

These pictures were taken by the lovely Lacey.  She is an awesome photographer.  You should book her for your next photo session.  I promise you won’t be disappointed.  Check her out here:

Lacey’s Photography

I love that she even took a picture of my husband scaling the bridge, and this lizard my #2 caught.  She perfectly captured the beauty of my #5’s eyes.

Isn’t he yummy?  So, you can see that I had a lot of pictures to choose from, so I needed more frames than I had on the wall for my display.  No worries.  I hit a Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart and scored big time.  I messed around with the frames on the floor and came up with this:

I cut out cardboard and paper to represent the frames on the wall and I marked where the hangers were on the back of the frames on the front of the paper frames.  That way, when I needed to hang them, I could just go through the paper and rip it off once the nails were in place.

I taped the paper up on the wall and hammered the nails into place.

Then I hung the frames. 

I decided where I wanted my vinyl and emailed this picture to Brandi (the best vinyl lady ever!) with measurements.  I told her to choose whichever fonts she wanted and that I wanted both black and brown vinyl since I had black and brown frames.  This is what she did for me:

I love it.  I love her.  I have gotten so many compliments on my wall collage! Email Brandi with your order at 3bbgunns (at) gmail (dot) com.

This is what my front room looks like now:

Love, love, love it!

Since I already had an order in with Brandi, I asked her to make up a “Family Rules” collage for a wall in my kitchen.  This wall:

Boring.

To apply vinyl, you need to CAREFULLY peel the backing off the vinyl.

With a project this big, I found it easier to roll it.  You have to make sure you don’t have any of your lettering sticking to the backing.

Once the backing is off, lightly place the transfer tape and vinyl on your wall.

When you’ve got it where you want it, make sure it is even.  When it is even, take a spatula, credit card, driver’s license, library card or whatever else you want to use, and secure your vinyl to the wall.  Brandi describes it best HERE.

Carefully, carefully, c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y….

…peel off the transfer tape…

…keep going…

…when the transfer tape is off, smooth out your letters to secure them in place…

…and you’re done!

The picture was taken on an angle.  Sorry.  But, do you love it as much as I do?  I love what vinyl can do to a room.  If you need a change in décor, vinyl is the perfect way to spruce up a room!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Okay, sorry, but I haven’t been able to do any new projects, but since none of you read this post before, this is new to you. Right? I hopefully will get a project finished for next time, but this was one of my favorite projects I did last year, so that works, right? Did everyone have a good Christmas & New Years? Ours was a nice, relaxing (once we finished moving) break!

I can’t take credit for this idea. My wonderful friend Rhonda had a huge piece of wood at her house that she’d done this with. I did mine a different shape, and a little different idea…

If you have a mirror that is broken, use it for cool art!

I actually started with a piece of mirror that I got from a glass shop in town. They have tons of pieces that they can’t use, and just end up throwing away, so they just gave it to me.

I put it in a garbage bag so shards wouldn’t go flying.

And dropped it

7 years bad luck? Maybe…Break them as little or as big as you want, depending on the size of your base or the look you want.

Paint your base however you want…

Then start laying out the mirror pieces on them

Zebra?

And a circle. This was during the summer when we lived in a rental with sa-wheet orange kitchen counters!!

Then glue them down using liquid nails construction adhesive. Make sure they are all glued down!

And hang up your unique art piece (Mine are currently in storage…)

Next up….If you have a mirror with just a lil’ ol crack in it!!!

I had a very run-of-the-mill mirror that you can buy pretty much everywhere. It was just leaning on a wall, and taking up space. I decided I wanted to try and hang it horizontally above my desk. As I was hanging it, I dropped it. Serves me right for trying to do it without someone else to hold up the other side! When it fell, it cracked (luckily not shattered!). I got so frustrated I hid it under the bed until I decided what to do with it.

One night, in the shower (you’ll find that’s where all my ideas seem to come from; maybe because I can’t hear kids screaming?!?), I thought of trying to paint the mirror to camouflage the crack. I got up the next morning, and started doodling ideas with a dry erase marker.

Don’t mind the awesome shag green carpet in my bedroom in our old rental…See my lovely assistant? Who care’s if she’s not even 1, she’s going to help! This was the zebra print idea

This was a giant flower idea, using the crack as a stem…

And this was the winner. A bunch of swirlies and doodles on the glass, coming off the vine…

I taped off the mirror and went ahead and painted the frame black. So, at this point, I was trying to decide how to cover up the crack…Another idea…Electrical Tape! It was already black! Brilliant! I taped up the crack, and then just for balance sake, taped a smaller area on the other corner so it would be the same width. I actually went through and free-hand painted all the swirls and such, and decided I didn’t like it. Yeah, I’m picky like that.

See the orange counters?

This was the first time around with free-hand. It wasn’t bad, I just wasn’t loving it. So I used the metal scraper (actually for baking, but whatever…) and scrapped all the paint off. This time I made a stencil (upper left corner) and tried it again

Here it is going with the stencil. See the stick? I was using that to touch-up parts where it bled a little under the stencil. I really am that crazy. It took FOREVER but it made the lines look so crisp!

Then, I hung it on my wall…by myself! You’re thinking, Ashlee, don’t you learn? That’s why you broke it the first time! Yeah, I’m just not patient enough to wait for the busy hubby to get home. I took precautions this time though, so it made it up with no casualties!

Can you tell there’s a crack? I love how it turned out! And since doing this, I’ve seen this:

From Target

From Anthropologie

And this:

From Thrifty Décor Chick. I love looking through all her cool ideas! It made me happy that I had thought to hang one horizontally before seeing these…Also, think of what designs you could do with your own! Any color!

So, even if you break a mirror, there’s hope for it still!! Happy New Year!

Linking up to The CSI Project