Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

You all are seriously the best – you gave me such great ideas and suggestions for the stairwell wall (for the original post, click here). After tinkering a bit, here’s the finished – no, really finished – wall:

Nailed it!

Here’s what I did: I listened to you. Here’s what you suggested:

1. Add letters to the art; don’t just use the posters.

2. Use smaller art, rather than the big poster which could not be adjusted in its position on the wall.

3. Use a combination of things you love – letters, art, etc.

4. Use more color than just black and white frames.

Done! What I did was listen to your advice and my own heart – I found pieces I loved and wanted to see each day.

My daughter and I made this burlap canvas sign when we hosted the Hometalk event at Michaels.

Beneath it is art my son made in nursery school:

Prodigy?!?

Under that is my favorite mother’s day card ever (if you want to see how I painted the back of the frame to fit the oddly shaped art, see this post):

Then I got into letters and numbers. I added back in the Cs that I’ve collected – one from a thrift store and one from HomeGoods (the third one didn’t make the cut):

The 7 tile is from Southern Accents Architectural Antiques – it’s a tile from an old building. And 7 is my favorite number (along with multiples of 7, too).

The ampersand is from a crafts store, framed with a thrift store frame (99 cents!) that was already painted teal. I may decide to paint or cover the ampersand in fabric; it blends with the wall a bit too much and makes it hard to see.

My beautiful friend Ellen gave me this card during my big decision-making process. I framed it in another thrift store, 99-cent, frame. It makes me happy:

I kept the butterfly art, but moved the big Trees poster upstairs.

Framed sage advice, from a fortune cookie:

“More art in your life at this time will help you feel better.” I mean, when would it not??

What makes me feel better is that I finally love this wall.

It has letters, numbers, an odd number of things, art, color, happiness.

I wish I could tell you that I carefully measured and planned where to put everything, but I didn’t.

To put it together, I just put some things I loved on the floor and followed my gut on where to put them. I ended up only changing the location of one thing (the number tile). It helps to have a helper (in my case, my daughter) hold things up so you can step back and see how they look. I wanted to create a collected, eclectic look, so I didn’t want it to look too “planned” or symmetrical.

What do you think? Thank you for all your help!