The Great Wall of Frames

We have a problem.

It's this huge, white, bare patch of wall hanging out in our hallway. Not the prettiest thing to look at, is it? It's so sad and slanty. I'm not holding the camera crooked, that's just the way our apartment slants. Well we've successfully looked at this for two years and we are sick of it! We played around with the idea of hanging a giant map and putting pins in it to mark the places we've been. Mary even found a great old map but try as we may, it just wasn't working out. Then, one day we stumbled across a little something on younghouselove.com that would be perfect for our bare patch.  Side note: Mary and I are HUGE fans of John and Sherry Petersik. HUGE FANS. But not in a creepy way. Well, I'll let you be the judge of that later in this post.

Anyway, back to my point. So we were looking at YHL and they did this beautiful frame wall. We saw it and it was love at first sight. So naturally, we decided to copy them.

It actually ended up being a lot cheaper than we expected. We did buy a few frames from Ikea but a lot of the frames were just ones we had lying around the house. We liked the idea of the frames all being a little different but in the interest of cohesiveness (did I just make up a word?) we decided to paint them all the same color. All it took was one container of acrylic paint from Michaels to paint them all.

Then we had this. 

That is one big pile o' frames that needed filling. Next up we went though our pictures and knick knacks looking for anything we wanted to hang. It was actually a lot easier than we expected and the best part is that we can switch out the contents of the frames at any point for an entirely different look. Here is a sneak peak of a couple of our favorite frames.

This is a piece of artwork Mary created in kindergarten. I'm not sure what's going on, but I like it!

I have been collecting movie tickets since the dawn of time so I selected a few oldies but goodies to display.

Now comes the hard part. The semi-random yet aesthetically pleasing arrangement. More to come on that later. All we know is that this beauty is going to hang out somewhere towards the middle.

What's that? Oh, just a signed letter from the Petersik gang! Ok, so we are a little creepy. But we figure we copied them, so we might as well pay them a little homage, right?

Somewhere to start

When I was approached by our friend M to create arrangements for an event for her work, I jumped at the opportunity. Have I ever made floral arrangements for an official “event” before? No. But I find that my friends can have the confidence and urgency that I might need to replace my worry or lack of experience. Do I love flowers? Yes. You’ve got to start somewhere right? Well, this is my starting point.

My guidelines were: two large arrangements, one small, floral, and “she likes things symmetrical”. I took this and ran with it. I know that M’s work colors are blue and white, so I decided hydrangeas would be the flower of focus. On to Michael’s I went...

I found two “wreath stands” that I dismantled to become “Styrofoam ball stands”. Then comes the Styrofoam balls, hydrangeas, ferns, and thin wooden spirals. To be honest at the time of purchase, I was not one hundred percent sure of what would come of all of these items, but that’s half the fun, right?

After a few hours of separating, spacing, and altering I couldn’t be happier with the final product!