Being an avid Pinterest-er (is that a word?), I have been pouring over different pins of feature picture walls and pondering over what theme to go for, how to arrange it, what to put in the frames - it really has been quite a conundrum. So while browsing through the Marks & Spencer card section a wave of inspiration overtook me. They have really fun, very well designed greetings card which I thought would be perfect for my upcoming picture wall. So I grabbed my favourite ones and hightailed it to Ikea and Homebase for my DIY essentials. I wanted to personalise the frames myself, so a mixture of sizes of Ikea white frames was perfect for the project. This is what I did next...
1. First of all I cut the greetings cards to the size of the frames and matched them to what fit in best with the placement of wording. I wanted to make sure that my favourite design was in the largest frame, so that it could be central. I am all about positivity at the moment - hence Styling Happiness - so this motto was perfect to wake up to every morning (the picture wall is right next to my bed).
2. From Homebase I picked up a Crown metallic paint in "millionaire", I wanted to go for a brassy gold as I think a more yellowy gold can be a little too Paris Hilton wearing a Juicy Couture tracksuit, Chihuahua in handbag circa 2006. I also purchased Frogtape to make sure my frames were decorated with precision and a small paint brush as the painting was intricate.
3. I put down a plastic dust sheet to protect the floor from any spills and started to apply to Frogtape to the frames to the design that I wanted. I would recommend propping the frame up on something if you are painting all four sides so that you can rotate it around from the underneath. The frame itself needs about 3 coats of the gold paint before it stops becoming streaky - I think this is mainly due to the fact that Ikea frames are plastic and the paint was really fighting against me on this.
4. For this frame I wanted to give it a vintage feel so I dabbed the paint all over the frame and then rubbed it in using kitchen towel to give it a worn feel.
5. For the picture on the left I applied Frogtape to the top and the bottom to give it an accent of gold. For the picture on the right I thought the background colour was enough and didn't want to overload to collage with gold so kept this simple and paint free.
6. After I painted them all (bar one) I left the Frogtape on over night to make sure that the paint had set. Metallic paint has a completely different texture to normal paint and has a lot more elasticity.
7. As you can see when removing the Frogtape the accents of gold look a lot more subtle and add that little glint needed to add a little bit of a sparkle to the wall. I arranged the pictures like this just to put them out but after a lot of rearranging I decided that this was actually my favourite combination so decided to go back to the original - if it isn't broke don't fix it!
8. Ikea frames come with picture legs on the back so that you can display them on surfaces, on walls this just makes them stick out. I just pulled off the leg with brute force to make sure that the pictures sat flat on the wall.
9. Usually I am very precise about the positioning of pictures on walls and my spirit level and measuring tape is always at the ready. However, in this instance I wanted to give it that fun higgledy piggledy look that picture walls are so well known for so I went with gut instinct and placed the frames next to each other to check placement before hammering that nail into the wall!
So here is the finished product, apologies the lighting in my bedroom is somewhat to be desired! In total the whole project only took a couple of hours (excluding drying time) and was so simple to do. With a kickstart of inspiration from Marks & Spencer for the frame content, I finally have my perfect Pinterest feature picture wall. Follow these 9 steps and you can have one too!
Any questions on how I did it? Comment!
Styling Happiness xoxo
