I love wall collages

Monday, October 1, 2012

Long before Pinterest existed or I regularly lusted over Pottery Barn catalogs, I have been a wee bit obsessed with wall collages. I think it started in college when I didn't have any large pieces of art to hang on the wall to take up space, but I had tons of smaller pieces that meant a lot to me and I wanted to display them all.

Naturally, as my tastes evolved and matured, my home style changed, too. But wall collages are something that I haven't grown out of. Lucky for me, they are in vogue, so I'll roll with it!

We finished building our house 3 months before we got married in 2011. Let me tell you, building a house and wedding planning are SO easy to do at the same time. NBD. (sarcasm). It was intense, but fun. But that meant that in addition to bridal mags, I was poring over home magazines, websites and Pottery Barn catalogs because we had registered at PB, and was getting all sorts of ideas for decorating. I knew I wanted to do a wall collage on the large wall in our living room.

I had been collecting the perfect set of frames for a massive collage while we had been building the house. But once I moved in, there was something about putting nails into my brand new walls...I just couldn't do it! So I dealt with bare walls for a few months until I could get over defacing my lovely, perfect, freshly dry-walled and painted walls.

Once I joined Pinterest over a year ago, it seemed my love of and obsession with collages exploded, because there were so many ideas. I couldn't handle it. It was sensory overload. I think most of us probably had a little bit of that going on when we first joined Pinterest, am I right? ("Oh, look! A way to get stains out of microfiber! A new slow cooker recipe! A cute nursery for the child I don't have!" Pin, Pin, Pin, Pin, PIN!). Anyway, I started getting excited about driving nails into my walls and so I did, a little here and little there.

I wanted to share some of the collages we have in our home in case any of you are fellow wall-collage addicts.

This large one over the console table has been re-done several times - I just wasn't happy with it at first! So yes, I had to take everything down and spackle the holes and touch up the paint...sigh. But I think I am happy with it - for now, at least.

{I get tired of things easily!}















Speaking of boredom, this one to the right is one of my favorites because I can rearrange things as often as I want without having to spackle, sand and paint over the holes! I got this idea from Pottery Barn (no surprise there). I love the look of these ledge shelves. But the PB versions are super pricey. I found these babies at IKEA for $14.99 each.

Most of my frames are from HomeGoods, Michaels, and Hobby Lobby. I like the collages that have all matching frames (like all white or all silver), but for our living room, I like to mix up the sizes, colors and textures of the frames since the rest of the room is pretty neutral.















The next idea I got from Pinterest. I'd seen the burlap-covered canvasses with initials or monograms, and thought it would be a pretty easy project. And it totally was. I bought 12 x 12 square canvasses and painted a Times New Roman-esque lowercase "k" and "a" for the Mrs. and Mr. of the house.

In the middle is a chalkboard, but when I bought it, it was a banged up mirror with a scratched frame (on clearance at TJ Maxx for $5!). I popped out the mirror, used Chalkboard spray paint (about 5 layers), refinished the frame to make it look a little rustic, and bam. Done. This collage hangs in our kitchen/breakfast nook, which is perfect because I use the chalkboard mostly as a Menu board. I like to meal plan for the week in advance whenever I can, and the board helps keep me on track (and lets Alex know what he can expect for dinner!).



The latest collage I've added is this Key collage. I originally had some decorative keys hanging in the collage over the console table (one of the earlier versions of it that I didn't like). So when I re-did it, I was left with pretty keys and no where to put them. So I came up with this quote that had the word "key" in it, painted a canvas, found 2 more keys for clearance at HomeGoods, and there we have it!










So, like I said - I love me some wall collages. Don't get me wrong, I like large pieces of art, too. We just have tons of empty wall space in our home, and wall collages are an inexpensive way to fill an area. For example, the burlap canvas and mirror collage cost me no more than $20 and about 2 hours total to make.

When I see something I like that would look great in a collage, especially if it's a steal, I buy it: you never know when you'll want to change up a collage or add another one.

After all, I do get bored easily :)

Follow me on Pinterest to see my ever-present love of wall collages (and I occasionally pin other stuff, too - promise!)






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