Paper Jewels

I found another great example of wallpaper-as-art and wanted to share it, especially because there’s an extra bit of food-for-thought here. First, here’s the inspiration photo:

Wallpaper as Art - Inspiration from Style-Files.com

Now there’s a point to all this. First off, this is (part of) a great-looking room (and Style Files is full of inspiration, truly, go look around!) But even more - here’s the bear-with-me idea.

I happen to think this is a great looking vignette. I also think that the wallpaper they’ve used in this pic is totally unremarkable - in and of itself. It’s okay. It’s not fabulous. But the way they’ve used it, as a strong graphic statement, framed AS ART, really does look terrific.

Okay, that’s Idea Number One. It doesn’t have to be priceless art. It has to say something to you, or be a color you love, or whatever. Treat it as art, be bold with it - and it IS art.

Which leads me to my second point. I took the photo from Style Files and fiddled with it - excuse me ladies, it was just to try something out. What I did, was grab what I consider a totally inappropriate graphic from my own files (inappropriate meaning, it ain’t “art”, it’s just a graphic). This particular graphic is of a pair of earrings on my site - and yes, I do think the earrings are terrific (you can find them here). But as wall art? No, I wouldn’t choose this graphic.

But in my doctored-up-photo, I took the earrings image. I copied it a bunch of times - just like you could do if you took any image you liked and made 20 copies at your local copy shop. Then group the images together on the wall (put pasteboard or something behind them if you don’t want to paste directly on the wall) and presto: you’ve got strong wall art.

See what I mean? This isn’t priceless art. But because it is a strong image, and the repetitive idea makes it even more graphically interesting, and because it’s framed on the wall like “real art” - it works. It looks good. It makes a statement.

It costs practically nothing if you use images from magazine pages. Or maps. Or wallpaper samples. Whatever. Use *recycled* images, that’s even better.

Try it. It works.

It’s amazing the things you can find on the web when you start looking around. I found a beautiful armoire, see the pics, which was made from two bookcases - and it’s entirely do-able!

She found two matching bookcases on Freecycle! so these are even being recycled and reused - and they were free! The bookcases are hinged together with piano hinges, clear plexi is added to some of the shelves to keep things in place, and the drop-down desk is hinged too.

And look how much organization and storage she’s got inside!

So useful but equally as important, stylish and decorative. You could use any sort of paper to decorate the outside - make it shoji style, add a mirror, you name it.

Talk about inspiration! You can check out more directions on Ayoska’s Blog. Lots of green ideas there too