It's about time

A home just doesn't feel like home until there are a few pictures on the wall! And we FINALLY have made at least one wall a little more home-y.

I was inspired by the monogram wall here and the hallway of frames here. Eventually I plan to do several frame collages but for starters, I chose to do the entryway. It's like a nice little 'HELLO' when you walk in the door.

Here was my process:

First I brought out all of the frames I have stashed away in the house and also used a 20% off total purchase coupon at Michael's to buy more frames (that were already on sale 50% off). Score! But, as you can see, there was quite a mess of materials on my table while I figured out what I wanted to use.

Once I chose the frames I wanted I laid out a template on the wall (this is the technique I got from Young House Love at the link above).

Then it was time to put some pieces together and get them ready to hang. I had some empty frames stashed away that used to hold cute animal prints in the kids' nursery. I sold the prints at our garage sale last year...but one woman who bought two of the prints mentioned to me that she would just throw the frames away. So I asked to keep the frames and still sold her the prints. The empty frames are now the perfect thing to hold a handprint from each of my babies!

I just tacked the handprints to the inside back of the frame. Eventually I'll probably add some fabric behind these...or do something different to change them up. But for now, they work.

I also decided I wanted a little chalkboard for my wall of frames. I chose a frame I liked and Michael cut a piece of MDF to fit the opening. We painted it with chalkboard paint and then used glazing points to keep the MDF in place in the frame. Glazing points can be found at any hardware store and are handy little things (and cheap). They are sharp points that are used to hold glass in old windows. You simply push them into the wood frame and voila!

The final step when using chalkboard paint is to 'season' it by covering the surface with chalk. Then I wrote out a message using a chalk marker. Sadly, I bought a fat tipped marker instead of a fine one so I'm not super excited about the results...but the fabulous thing about chalk pens is there's no chalky dust! Awesome!

I found a fun (free) art print here that had the PERFECT colors for my wall. I'll eventually change this out with some of Elliott's drawings from preschool, but for now I'm loving it!

I bought this little key holder at Hobby Lobby a l.o.n.g time ago but we didn't know where we'd hang it. I like having our keys in one accessible place now. Above the keys is a shadow box that I took the glass out of and added a little zinc 'C' I picked up in a local antique store.

At Michael's I also picked up some fun patterned paper and lots of different sized 'C's. I love the mustard-y colored paper you see below. And I spray painted one of the wood Cs a reddish-orange color and mounted it on corrugated paper. It was my first time trying spray adhesive. Interesting stuff.

Here's the whole wall put together. Just imagine it with a cute little bench underneath (which I have yet to find). I'll probably make some more additions and changes but....ahhhhhhh...it feels great to finally have a little personality on our walls!