Project #6: Wall Art for Living Room

When Keith switched jobs recently, we were on the hook to give back the artwork that had been on loan from his former employer. It was a large painting that filled a fairly large space on our living room wall. I could only take a few days of looking at the emptiness before I had to think of something.

This is what we did:

1970s chic! Total cost – $20

I went to an occaisonal sale at the Cottage House on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. This was on the first day of the month the sale was open and it was nutty in there – a lot of women grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. The Cottage House is just that – a small house – so it was hard to manuever around all the stuff and the women with glazed eyes hugging shabby chic furniture. To the Cottage House’s credit, they really move the merch there.

The backyard and the garage at Cottage House are also full of stuff. I found a bunch of old shutters leaning against the house and amoung them were some lattice panels for $5 each, so I bought them. The big plus is that they are super lightweight. They needed to be repaired (with wood glue at the joints) and cleaned. We decided to leave the finish rather than painting them a different color.

I thrifted the printed fabric behind the panels awhile ago – it was a great Mad Men-esque print from the 60’s that was $5. We used some solid fabrics as accents, attaching all the fabric to the back of the frame with hot glue. I broke my glue gun in the process – or rather, the glue gun tip fell off mid-glue. This is the second time this has happened to me so I think I’m done buying the $8 glue guns.

Here’s the wall art “in a room” with my fuzzy deer/reindeer collection, squirrel pillow and, of course, Freja: