DIY Artwork

This week I’m reaching far into my decorating archives for a DIY project I did years ago.  Do you remember your first apartment or dorm room?  What kind of crazy stuff did you have hanging on the walls?  I remember this one guy who checked out artwork from the library to adorn his walls! I didn’t even know the library loaned out artwork, but apparently they do!

Anywho…I digress….here’s the DIY artwork project that my roommate and I did years ago for our first apartment:

I bought empty wood frames from a local import/salvage store for $9.00 each.  For the “artwork”, we just enlarged and copied colorful coordinating photos from a gardening book.  The matte is actually wallpaper.  Then we outlined the photo with a gold paint pen for an additional “matte”:

It’s hard to tell from the photos, but we coated the whole thing with a couple layers of glue in a swirl pattern.  You could use Modge Podge and get the same effect:

The whole thing is mounted onto foam core board.  The foam core was actually a large advertising sign from a store where my mom used to work, so here’s what they look like from the back:

So basically, we glued some wallpaper onto foam core, centered a photo in the middle and glued it on, outlined the photo with a paint pen, coated it with glue, and taped it in a frame!  At the time, this was the perfect solution for those boring white apartment walls, and at a cost of less than $50 for a wall of custom artwork, we certainly didn’t complain!  Here’s the bare wall before:

And here’s me & my roommate modeling our beautiful project:

And during Christmas with our cute little tree:

This was all done before the internet is what it is today, so I’m sure there are tons of great resources for free downloadable art that you could use for a similar project.

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This post got me thinking about something….bare with me here…..when my best friend and I got our first apartment, we were so excited to decorate it all cutesy!  Of course most (okay, all) of our furniture was hand-me-downs, and all of our decorating was done on a shoestring budget with items from places like Hobby Lobby and Big Lots.  But we just thought we were hot stuff! I look back on some of the photos now and think “what were we thinking???” with regards to all the matchy-matchiness, questionable color choices, and so forth.  But, hey, it was the nineties!

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a little blog linky party showcasing some of our past decorating mistakes choices that at the time we thought were so fabulous?!?  I know my mom would love for me to show off her pastel pink and blue sponge-painted walls!  Or maybe it wasn’t your decorating choice, but someone else’s, and you were just lucky enough to reap the benefits after purchasing the home.  Have a bathroom or kitchen stuck in the eighties?  Tacky gold wallpaper?  Let’s show it loud and proud!!

The only problem I could forsee would be coming up with photos if it’s something you did years ago before the digital age (unless you’re like me and have a scanner to upload all those old photos).  And of course I’d have to come up with a catchy little name, any ideas?  Throw-Back Thursday?  It Was Hot, But Now It’s Not??  Help me out here!

Leave me a comment (or vote in the poll at the top left) and let me know if you are interested in participating.  I would probably plan it for sometime in early October, maybe on a Tuesday or Wednesday? If we have enough people, I think it would be fun!  I may even come up with a little giveaway to offer.