UncategorizedSouthwestern Family Portrait Art February 3, 2014If you’re headed over here from Capturing Joy with Kristen Duke, welcome! When Kristen asked me to join in this series, I was so excited! It is such an amazing thing she’s put together and I am so grateful to be a part of it! She has two Decorating with Photos projects going up every day from so many amazing bloggers and each one has a giveaway. Get out of town! Two blogger tutorials and two giveaways every single day for the entire month of February? Yep. I know. She’s awesome. Make sure you head over there and check out today’s giveaway and the other projects! Now, onto my Southwestern Family Portrait Art. I love decorating and styling our home. I’m making a business out of it! But I also believe that creating beautiful homes is useless without meaning behind it. For me, that meaning is creating a place that reflects and embraces our families. We live in this house and I want it to be a place that embraces us at the end of the day and makes us breathe a sigh of relief because we’re home. We’ve been renovating our house for the last year. You can read about Our Renovation Story here. But because of that, I haven’t put on the finishing touches: family photos. In comes Kristen’s series, perfect timing! I have a big open wall above my blogging desk and it’s also right inside our front door. I thought, that is the perfect place for a family gallery wall, but I was torn. I wanted family pictures, but I wanted some sort of art here since it’s basically our entryway. I love southwestern and kilim style prints and an idea came about! Could I somehow combine all of those things I loved to create an art installation that was made up of family portraits? My idea for this southwestern family portrait art was born! Here’s how I created it. So, first of all, I sketched out my shape. The best part about southwestern style is that often, the shapes are made up of straight lines in sort of stair steps. That made creating this out of photos much easier. This was my initial sketch above. As you can see (follow the arrow), the shape is made up of units of four 4×6″ pictures each. I chose all horizontal pictures, again for ease. So, that meant that each “unit” of four pictures was 1′ across and 8″ tall. I mentioned on Kristen’s blog that you can completely customize this for your size wall. Here’s where that comes in. With those 1′ x 8″ units stacking onto one another, it’s really easy to measure and see how much will fit on your wall. For example, my initial sketch had another row of stair steps, so it was 8″ taller and one foot wider. When I measured the wall, that wouldn’t fit. So, I shrunk it down by removing a unit from each side. Makes measuring and customizing easy! I laid it out on the ground first. I had a big wall, so it took 62 pictures and was about 5’x5′. As you can see from my sketch to this practice run above, I tweaked it some. Once I had it laid out, I realized that mine looked taller rather than wide and I didn’t like that. I had taken out some of the stair steps from my original plan. So, I added two 4×6″ photos to each end unit. So, now, those units are made up of six 4×6″ pictures instead of four. Does that make sense? I also noticed once it was laying out that the center needed more. In the sketch, I thought two 4×6″ photos would fill it up, but it definitely didn’t. So, I played around with it until I got a look I liked. Once I got it just right on the ground, I started hanging it up on the wall. I started using Scotch Double-stick Removable tape. I was hoping to find something that would hold, but wouldn’t peel off paint if I go to remove this some day. I put up the top half of the shape about three times, adding more tape each time it fell of and finally gave up. It just wasn’t going to hold. So, we went with regular old Scotch Double-stick tape. We’ve used this on the wall before and it didn’t peel off paint, but I’ve definitely heard people say it will. For us, we really, really loved this installment and are hoping to keep it for a really long time. It’s a small wall and worst case, we’ll touch up the paint one day. I realize that’s a pretty large commitment for many, so I did some reading on it. There are products out there called “art tape,” that sound great for this sort of thing. I didn’t have access to this product and we were really okay taking the risk with the double-sided stuff, but if you want to make one of your own and are concerned about that, you may want to try it. I love how it turned out so much. I keep walking by it and staring at all of the 62 favorite people and memories up there. It really is a special and stylish way to display family pictures. Make sure you go check out Kristen’s giveaway for today! *** The winner of the Gypsy Soul Collective bag will be announced tomorrow 🙂
Gabbi @ Retro Ranch Reno says February 3, 2014 at 10:03 pm Beautiful! I love the shape you chose…it’s so perfect for your home and style! 🙂 Reply
Julia@Cuckoo4Design says February 4, 2014 at 1:18 pm What an awesome idea and it looks so good! Such a meaningful and pretty statement piece. Reply
laurie at Laurie Jones Home says February 4, 2014 at 4:00 pm This is absolutely amazing, I love every element of this space and I’m so with you decorating your home with meaning just brings it to the next level!! Reply
angela says February 6, 2014 at 2:23 am This is such a creative way to display pictures! Love the shape and that they are black and white pics. Angela @ Number Fifty-Three Reply
Kathy Barnett says August 21, 2014 at 11:29 pm Question regarding photos, are they simply photos taped up or are they laminated, etc. Love the idea. Reply
Lindsay says August 22, 2014 at 11:16 am Hi Kathy! They are just photos! I didn’t laminate them or anything. Just printed in black & white from Walgreen’s. It was super easy and makes such a big statement! Plus, I love that it lets me use so many photos at once 🙂 People always come in and stand there for a while looking at all of the photos. Reply
[…] on over to my blog to read the full tutorial on how I created the pattern and measurements. The best part is that I have a way you can totally […] Reply
[…] love how the blue compliments the black and white photos in our Southwestern Family Portrait Art! Another great way to display all those photos in your new space with […] Reply