I live in an old house. As far as we can tell, it was built in 1892. This means that our walls are primarily made of horsehair plaster. This also means that it’s nearly impossible to feel confident about hanging anything remotely heavy on the walls.
Case in point, the shelf housing several of my work binders came tumbling down in my office, barely hitting my brand new 27″ iMac on the way down. Not cool.
I decided to ditch the shelf and put some artwork on the wall instead. Because I look at this wall as I work (which is primarily writing), I wanted it to be something that might inspire me. Or, at least make me smile.
Instead of looking around for artwork, I decided to make my own. (I’m picky, and it would have taken me forever to pick something out.)
I pulled out a collection of old magazines I bought at a flea market. The magazines were from the 1960s and were mainly bought for the ads. I have a degree in advertising and love looking at old, vintage ads. Vintage European ads are pretty awesome as well.
Anyway, I cut out some ads and images that caught my eye using an exacto knife. I then started placing them on a large canvas I bought at our local craft store to make a collage.
Realizing that I would have some white space, I decided to take my acrylic paints out and started to paint the canvas. I used broad, random brush strokes and didn’t pay much attention to making the color consistent. I just wanted a basic background for my vintage ad collage.
Once the canvas was dry, I started to lay out my ads again. The color made a big difference. I then decoupaged the ads to the canvas, using a roller to get them as smooth as possible. (I still ended up with some wrinkles, but I decided it looked kind of cool and didn’t stress over the imperfection.)
I moved the ads around quite a bit as I was decoupaging until I found the arrangement I liked. I was thinking about using some paint to add some extra details to the artwork, but I didn’t want to complicate things. It’s up on my wall now, and I kind of like it the way it is.
What do you think?
