Art Harmony

Rob and I have always had a pretty "undecorated" apartment. Meaning, we don't have very many pieces of art or things to brighten up our space. Part of the reason is that we have a hard time agreeing on what to put up. The main reason is that we live in an apartment that is big and functional, but doesn't have any nice architectural details to play off of. There was one wall in our main living space that has always been a problem.


Between the heater, thermostat, and sliding glass window, it's a problem wall. It's too hard to put something centered because of the thermostat, and putting things too close to the window just makes things feel unbalanced. After seeing many of the projects and ideas on design sponge (an awesome website, by the way!), I thought maybe we could paint an image on the wall. It could be quick, fast, and cheap, because we already had a LCD projector and tons of leftover paint from when we moved in. Rob loved the idea because he's a huge fan of 2x4 and their super-scale graphic designs.

For about 3 seconds I thought maybe I could create an image to use, but I am not an artist. Of course, Rob could definitely create something, but his taste tends to go more to the dark:

What happened to the pope?

and industrial:

Images of cranes from a train window in France.

where I like things that are retro/whimsical:

my Amy Ruppel piece :)

So, to make things easier, I decided to choose a piece of art that someone else made. I bought a letterpress card back in May from port2port press that I really thought embodied both of our aesthetics.

Nice foot, Unki!

It's called "Hanging Out" and it's an image of two birds, hanging out on electrical wires. The wires appeal to Rob's love of all things industrial, and I love the birds. I emailed Maria of port2port press for permission to use her art, and she generously agreed!

Our first step was for Rob to create a Photoshop image of the wall art.


Then, we dragged out the projector

and made several adjustments until we got the correct placement.


Of course, we took time to admire the image

and Rob got to work drawing pencil lines to help our painting.


We painted

while the cats alternately created shadows and oversaw the work.






Less than two hours later, we were done!





This was such a fun, relaxing, rewarding, and incredibly successful project. We love it! We really want to thank Maria for allowing us to use her beautiful artwork. It has brought personality and beauty to a neglected corner of our house.