Pinterest time! Up first? A photography feature wall

Today’s pinspiration – a photography feature wall!

OK.  Upfront disclaimer – I have no design talent, none.  Nary a drop.  My two older sisters sucked all of it away from my creative mother, leaving me to inherit the genetic wide hips and varicose veins.  I know what I like when I see it, but if you drop me into a design, furniture, paint, tchotchkes store, I will wander about from aisle to aisle, arms overloaded because I didn't get a cart, until my feet hurt and I’m near tears.  I’m the Queen of SYR (save your receipt) because I will invariably have to return half of anything I’ve bought – wrong color, wrong size, just wrong.

But a feature wall – pictures, mixed media – how hard could that be?  As it turns out, not too bad – as long as in the words of the latest Disney classic you can let it go.  Why?  Well, Pinterest is filled with beautiful pins of beautiful homes featuring artistic photography framed and arranged in stunningly creative ways.  I soon realized that the shear cost of resizing, reprinting, reframing, and quite possibly just substituting my family pics with stock photos of beautiful children in fairy like settings would cost more than a small fortune.

So, well, OK.  This ain't that.  Let it go number one. 

I made peace with the fact that I simply couldn't invest that kind of time and money, and I really do love my family, so I decided to use what I had, and stick with my typical design theme – eclectic early garage sale.

So-back to the pinning boards, where I began to notice other pinners posting designs with eclectic in mind.  No common frames?  No common colors?  No degree in photography?  No problem.  They take the ‘throw it in the blender approach and see what happens’.  

And so that’s what we did.  First?  It was time to paint, probably way past time to paint.  Five, yes five different paint colors later, sampled on differing parts of the walls over several weeks’ time, the end result is that we came back full circle to a color called Pale Powder  interestingly similar to a color that we chose when we first built the house 23 years ago.  We’re also on a first name Christmas card sharing basis with the nice lady behind the paint counter at Lowe's, but I digress.  Honestly, we’re nothing if not predictable…painting done.

Next, it was off to Lacy Bella Designs – or more technically on to this page on their website.  I purchased a Groupon from them and knew that I wanted to use their custom, personalized designs for a large wall anchor.  Because I was working with such a large blank space, I knew I could go really big on size, 70" wide by 16" high…Letting it go also meant, of course, that I didn't like decals hubby liked, he didn't like decals I liked, so we settled on something neither of us liked, but could tolerate – and now love.  Go figure.

Once the decals were up – a very easy application – it then made designing everything under the decal a tad easier (haha, me typing designing.  Too funny).  I say a tad easier because there are still lots of decisions to make –layout, pictures, extra elements, and as mentioned above, a husband who suddenly has an opinion…hmmm.

Well, OK, it pains me to admit it, but some of his ideas were good ones.  The best?  Move the furniture out of the way, lay everything out on the floor and play bulletin board.  I wish I’d taken a picture of the process, as it was really quite fun.  Honest.  Sure, some snark was traded, but no one cried (me) or cussed (him).  Once we were done, it became clear what was going to work and what wasn't.

Let it go #3?  OK, so you were probably thinking to yourself several paragraphs ago ‘why did the hubby get a vote anyway?’ Well, he who wields the hammer votes with said hammer.  Some more complicated ideas o’ mine just didn't make the cut.  And some spacing didn't translate as well as I’d hope from the floor to the wall.  But the labor was cheap and after 29 years of marriage, still sort of cute, so I’m not complaining, at least not that he heard.

Recap?

Yes, these are my family photos – no fairyland substitutes required.  No, I didn't buy new frames.  Yes, I had a few tchotchkes in the basement from previous failed attempts at design so I thankfully didn't have to buy anything.  We combined those with a couple coats of paint, a personalized decal, invested in some good picture hooks – and voila’!  I think the finished project came out pretty eclectic early garage sale good.