Office renovations

We're big fans of frame collages around here.  We have a small one in our bedroom, one of vacation pictures over our buffet, and now Matt & I both have one in our offices.  Our previous decor (and home furnishing plan) was pretty much, whatever we got, as we got it.  Now with my extra free time (and maybe, probably, some design blogs I read), I've been putting more thought into what's in our home and what's on the walls.

Redoing our office walls has been a project on my mind since about March.  That's when I took the before picture in my office.  There are many reason it's 10 months later and I am just now posting about it, mostly because I just finished this past weekend. 

Matt's was actually done months ago, the night before we left for New York. 

We already had his karate black belt certificate professionally framed and had bought the canvas with 3 others in the spring (mentioned here).  I bought a few dollar store frames for the cards and Star Wars stamps.  And the Yoda picture his sister painted for us years ago.  It was pretty quick and easy.

Mine was another story.  I started thinking about it, accumulating things, thinking about it more.  I knew I wanted to represent some of my favorite places I've been, specifically New York, London, and Paris.  I spent many hours browsing Etsy looking for similar prints of these places (I wanted something besides framed photos).  I finally settled on these (New York, London, and Paris) from lauraamiss and "Matt" ordered them for me for my birthday.  (Side note: She has incredible customer service.  She apparently had a baby right around the time I placed my order and whoever was filling her orders sent me the European sized prints instead of the American 8x10.  She contacted me right away and sent complimentary correctly sized prints and threw in another for free.  And she had just had a baby and was shipping from Amsterdam so not cheap.  I was amazed.  I am not getting paid in anyway to say that, I was just really impressed.)

before picture

So I had those prints but had it in my head that I needed frames from IKEA.  The nearest one is in the Cincinnati area (3ish hours away) but I knew I would be in the area in the fall to visit college friends (more here).  So it got pushed back some more.  Then I came across this print on Pinterest and really liked it.  I showed Matt and he didn't not like it and, again, "Matt" ordered it for me for Christmas.

Shortly before Thanksgiving I started seriously working on putting everything together.  I had a pile of things I had been accumulating over the past 6 months and laid everything out on our dining table. 

I added some more things, bought more frames, spray painted a few frames right before it got too cold to do so.  I made my guides using ads from the recycle bins.  I moved things around, moved them back, moved some more.  I would have kept going but knew I'd need the table clear to unpack Christmas decorations so the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I enlisted Matt to help me hang them all.  Oh and this was after I put all my guides up and decided they needed moved over an inch.  (That is exactly why I do the guides!)

I was pretty excited to even get this far!!  The inbetween I had was even messier than the before above

So everything was hung before Thanksgiving but I was still waited to open my Christmas present to finish it up.  Matt didn't even open the shipping tube to wrap it, he wrapped the tube it was shipped in from Australia.  That's how he wraps things.  So I opened my rolled up print on Christmas and then had it flattening under books for awhile.  This past weekend I finally put it in a frame.  And I'm pretty excited about how it all turned out.  I have many of my favorite people and places up there (Matt factors in pretty heavily) and it actually makes sense compared to what was here the previous 7 years. 

And that's how it all ended up.  (I realized that this is a very difficult place to photograph since there is a window across from it that gives off a pretty mean glare.)  I'm quite proud of how it all turned out, the mix of photographs and "art" pieces.  And, besides the prints I got as birthday/Christmas gifts, the whole things was fairly inexpensive.  Maybe $40 on frames, prints, and canvases?

Run down of what's included starting top left:

1) Poster I got from my parents in college.  I spray painted the old frame so it would match better.
2) Cruise frame - bought this at a craft show, it's pictures from our honeymoon cruise.
3) Top right - Dingle canvas I made using this method
4) Paris & London small items are from the Target Dollar Spot (my sister pointed them out) and I spray painted Target frames.
5) Bottom right - these two are pages from a calendar we bought in Hawaii with the intent to frame some of the pages some day.  Over 6 years later I took the plastic off and used one of Waikiki Beach and one of Lahaina (two of our favorite places in Hawaii).
6) Bottom, 2nd from right - picture with my Grandparents, Mom, and Luke (here)
7) Three along the bottom are the New York, London, and Paris prints I mention above.
8) Bottom left is a canvas I made with a picture from our Miami trip (link to method above)
9) Two pictures from this summer/fall - Matt & I on a jet ski and one from Luke's 6 month shoot.
10) Middle row - two canvases I made - somewhere on Oahu and Central Park from Top of the Rock, from our first NYC trip.
11) Picture of Matt & I from our Color Me Rad race
12) A painting I think I did that I found when working on my basement project.  I liked the colors and like having something so old in my current life.

13) The print I got for Christmas, mentioned above
14) Picture with all 6 of my sisters, Matt & I with two of my sisters at our only Colts game (for Matt & I, they have both been since). and a picture of Luke from our Tennessee vacation this summer.
15) A flamingo keychain I got in Miami, inside an old kitchen frame I spray painted.

The only change I have is I think I'm going to spray paint a few more frames navy once the weather improves.  There is too much white in the middle but I didn't figure that out until there was snow on the ground. 

This completes the mini office makeover that I've been working on in spurts the last 8 months.  I redid this wall, added curtains, and we did the bench makeover.  I'm really really happy with how it's all come out.  Before last year we hadn't made many purely cosmetic improvements just because so it was nice to put some thought and care into the space where I spend a decent amount of time, or at least a lot of time looking at since it's open to our main living space. 

before

after

It's cleaner, prettier, and a lot more "me" now.  All together it wasn't too pricey (besides my presents which weren't too bad either) and it was worth it all.  I made a few bucks selling old hangings at our garage sale and repurposed a few to other parts of the house (the white collage frame and green lamp are both in Luke's room, for instance).  It's so nice having a pretty space!!