WAY Fun Wall Collage How-To : ) | Downers Grove Photographer

So… : )

Winter gets to me.  SERIOUSLY.  And one of the ways I tend to deal with the midwest’s sub-zero wind chills, falling snow, constant indoor-ness, and lack of the color green is by putting my mind into other things.  Those things are, typically, indoor things, but hey… there’s always something needing to be done around my house to keep my eyes from looking out the windows, and mid-January is the perfect time to tackle fun projects like the one I’m about to show you!

I’ve put a little “button” on the sidebar of this blog where I’ll start keeping track of nifty things you can do with your pictures… after all, if you’ve had a session with me you do have a disc full of sweet images just WAITING to be displayed for the world to see. : )  It will be fun to have a running log of these little projects… yay!

And, finally… let me preface this little project by saying that I’ve been thinking FOREVER about doing something sweet in our bathroom above the tub… it’s this big blank wall (can you believe I have a big blank wall with no pictures?!?) and it was screaming for something special.  Let me also preface this by admitting, shamelessly, that I’m one of the thriftiest people I know, so if you like to get a big bang for your buck than chances are you’ll LOVE this post!  Ok… here we go!!!

Target, one of the best and most fun stores of all time, has a super-fun “event” every January… It’s “The Great Save Event” and they set up a few aisles of the store just like a Sam’s or a Costco… think “bulk” and “cheap”. : )  Well, what happened to catch my eye but these glorious packs of picture frames!!!  The metallic finish wasn’t necessarily my style, but I really liked the shape of the frames for the project I had in mind…

That’s right… the 8×10′s came in 4-packs for $10.  Can I get a “WOO HOO”?!? : )

So I bought three sets.  Those of us who graduated third grade might have just calculated that I bought twelve 8×10 picture frames for thirty bucks.  I was tickled with myself…

I have recently fallen in love with some design / home decorating blogs that have me head-over-heels excited about working on our home.  I watched a pretty fabulous video on how to spray paint (oh my goodness I just typed that… if you have in your head that I’m a super-classy gal then I want you to forget I ever said the previous statement… ha!) on this nifty blog… if you have a few hours to spare head on over there and check her out, you’ll have a blast!

Anyway, I trotted my twelve sweet frames outside in seriously cold weather (a big spray-painting no-no, but really, what was I going to do?!?) and sprayed them, step-by-step, till they were beautifully coated in Rustoleum’s Heirloom White.  Yes, those are some of my frames on a cardboard box in the snow.  Sheesh!

Another one of these super-fun blogs put this on my radar:

It’s an awesome product.  REALLY awesome!  As soon as the frames were sprayed and dried (I let them dry in the semi-heated garage or they would have simply frozen out on our back deck…) I opened up this fabulous pad of Distress Ink, rubbed my finger on it, and spread bits of the ink around the edges of the frames.  They looked REALLY nice… as in (in my humble opinion!) Pottery Barn nice!

OK!  Here’s a picture of a finished frame, even though it’s a bit out-of-order… take a peek, then read on! : )

The next thing I did was choose twelve of my favorite photos… Since these frames are going above my tub (the spot of perfect relaxation) I wasn’t about to have people in these.  People are wonderful, mind you, but not when you’re in the tub.  I wanted something calming, soothing, and interesting to look at… so I went through some of the images I had taken over the summer in the towns and country surrounding our Wisconsin lakehouse.  I love these pictures, but hadn’t had any idea what to do with them up until this fun little project…

If I were decorating with these frames in a different part of the house, I’d TOTALLY use twelve black-and-whites from a session with my kids… how fun would that be?!?

I cropped them as squares, stuck a simple cute-sy border around each one, and printed them as 5×5′s.  I ordered them through my lab, but at MPix you can get 12 5×5 prints for 59 cents apiece.  And I think you can add a white border with them, so you don’t even need Photoshop! : )

Next, I hit JoAnn Fabrics because they were having a pretty rockin’ sale on their scrapbooking stuff…

Got this pad of beautiful paper for $10…

Then I chose 12 papers from the pad that played with the colors of our bathroom, cut them down to 8×10′s, and glued one of the prints in the upper-third of each resized paper.  I’ve seen that “off-center” look before and I’ve always loved it, plus it gave the pretty paper a chance to make a bit of a statement… : )

After I’d framed them all, I headed upstairs and used the old “pretend papers are the frames” trick…

I nailed in 12 nails and hung my beautiful new creations right above the tub… : )

Here they are, close-up… isn’t that a fun project?!? : )