Before & After

I've been feeling for quite some time that despite the warm color, our living room is too cold.  I like the pieces in it, but there are too many blocks of color and not enough texture.  In my search throughout the universe of blogs for inspiration, I found that I'm drawn to vintage design rather than the stark and planned nature of modern lines.  That was my taste not too long ago, but now I want layered and collected and homey.

& who doesn't like a little change now and then?  So, here we go...

The before is nice enough, but boring...right?  We've got high ceilings to take advantage of and while the mirror reflected a lot of light, it was always a little weird to watch yourself...watch TV.

The whole collage started with that beautiful pine cone print. We received it from a obviously very talented friend as a Christmas gift.  I've been wondering since then just where were we going to hang it.  After that, I turned to garage sales and thrift stores.  It also doesn't hurt to have a very resourceful mother-in-law.  I didn't care about material or color, I just wanted it to be interesting.  They were all going to get painted anyway.

Black to unify the pieces. 

I managed to collect all the pieces for this project in a matter of about a month.  ...yes, this is about as good as it gets for my "collecting over time".  I'm a woman of instant gratification here.

Next, I layed it out and marked where all my nails and screws should go.  The paper would serve as my template. The picture was invaluable as well since there was no way I was remembering where I wanted everything to be.  Prepare yourself for the most randomly organized collage you might ever see...

Tape up the template, nails and screws into the wall, hang up the pieces...and...I was done.  Well, after a lot of tweaking and creating 3 pieces of art to go into a some of the frames...I was done.

I think I can safely say that I've added a satisfactory amount of texture to this room.  This is a wall that will be able to evolve over time.  & I couldn't be happier with the end result.