Hall gallery

I've been planning on hanging lots of different types of black and white pictures and knick knacks in the hallway on the wall opposite the console table.  My mom even got me several black frames with black and white pictures of family members for Christmas (wedding pictures, etc).

I took a cue from Young House Love and started with pieces of paper that were the same size as the frame I was planning to hang.  Luckily, I had purchased several frames from Michaels (at 40% off) that came with a hanging template.  The template ended up making a big square and that was too boring for me, so I just cut out the frames and made my own!

Before:

After:

Sorry, but there's not really a good way to get an upclose picture of the second side.

We currently have pictures of scenery taken when we spent a few days in the Northeast last fall, wedding pictures of parents and grandparents, and pictures of the pup.  We'll eventually fill the rest of the frames in with more of the same.

Speaking of the hall, I also stopped by Home Depot to grab a couple of paint samples for the hall.  We are planning on just using a warmer neutral to make it look like it wasn't forgotten about.  Here's the three we are looking at, I'm kinda partial to the top one.

I'm going to extend that neutral into our bedroom on 3 of the walls and find a great bold color for the wall behind our bed.  I'm thinking maybe the dark teal that is found in two of our new throw pillows (in the center of that red flower).

Thoughts?

The one that almost ended me

I cannot believe I made it through this project without killing someone!  Warning: the project outlined here takes quite a bit of time the way I did it.  I loved the end product, but I will never make another one this way again.  I will say though, half of the reason it took me a month to finish is because I spent the entirety of the first two weeks of July at work…

I did some more copying last month.  J  How many sunburst mirrors have you seen lately?  They are popping up everywhere and DIY bloggers are making them out of everything under the sun – paint stirs, skewers, and 2X1s.  My personal favorite is this one made by Crazy Wonderful using cedar shims.  My mirror was a little smaller but other than that, I pretty much followed her tutorial since I liked the result so much.

I bought 7 packs of cedar shims and made a big circle out of them (to see exactly how many I would need). 

Cooper helped.  Clearly.

Then I split them up into bundles of 7 and 5 like she did.  I would have just tried to bundle and arrange them while still in the circle, but I’m too much of a freak for consistency to be able to handle that.  So I made several identical bundles and glued each of the 5 or 7 in a bundle together with Wood Glue.  For the overall assembly, I copied Crazy Wonderful almost exactly with the left over plywood and Gorilla Glue. 

For the paint job, I initially just tried metallic spray paint.  I used an entire can of brushed nickel and champagne but it still just didn’t look right.  I was trying to get a way with not using any metallic glaze.  I don’t really know why because as soon as I bought a champagne colored metallic glaze and applied one coat, the mirror looked like this. 

Then I just glued down the mirror and attached the wire on the back so I could hang it.  Here’s the finished product!

It is amazing how much it has warmed up the front guest bedroom which really up to this point has only had furniture in it, no decorations/art/anything.

Again, I love it, but I will never do anything like this again!

Oh, and just because I'm a proud mommy, check out Cooper in his very first Puppy Parade!  He did SO well!

Now he's prepared for July 4th, next year!