Archive for January, 2012

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Art Display Project | Shannon Harrison

January 27, 2012

It’s intriguing to me how, through this project, I’ve noticed that the personality and stage of life of each guest blogger is reflected in their homes and art. Take for instance my sweet friend Shannon Harrison.  Since I’ve met her in person I can tell you what a laid-back, down-to-earth girls she is while being an extremely devoted mom of little people.  I love that she is planning into the future by recording lasting memories for her posterity.  I love that those memories are in among the other well-loved, well-read books.  I love that her kids have access to her art and can feel an ownership in it.  Take a look…

Well my dear friend Wendy, I have to say I’m pretty stoked you asked me to share how I display my personal photos throughout our crazy little home! Ive surrounded by some pretty excellent company here on your fantastic blog! Dare I say my entry here may just be the most imperfect and random way of placement of photographic art in a home? Truth be told, so many times I have gone to purchase a huge gallery wrap of each of my children but the reality is for me, its just too hard to make that selection and spend that money when they’re each changing so fast. Besides, I just know I’ll have a new favorite image next week. Our house isn’t of the formal kind these days so our displays kinda reflect that. Heck, let get real; it looks like a run a 24 hour preschool over here. You may or may not notice little fingerprints or smudges on mirrors as you tour, just please pretend you don’t for my sake…

My husband and I have both said, if God forbid there was ever a disaster in our home, we would grab the children, my hard drives and our Blurb family albums. Since 2009, at the end of every year I have collected what are my favorites from the year and told the story of our last 12 months through a Blurb book. I usually include some thoughts about the year and a sort of a mushy love note from me to them in the front. I am still working on 2011, but here’s a little peek at 2010. If you haven’t tried Blurb, I highly recommend them. Their customer service is awesome and the quality of their press printed books is super. Either way, I highly suggest starting an annual book for your family, if not for yourself. I have made copies for each of my kids too so they can share the visual journey of our crazy little family with their own kids when they’re all grown..
The “gallery” that probably changes most often is the doors of our kitchen fridge. Its usually peppered with our weekly schedule, school work, coupons and reminders and random shots from our Fuji Instax. Recently I ordered some really fun Instagram magnets from a company called Stickygram. It took all of one minute to log into my Instagram account from their site and select which ones I wanted. They were at my mailbox in less than a week! If you have some favorites sitting in your Instagram account, this is a fun way to print and display them and my kids love playing with them. I’m trying to complete an Instagram 366 this year so I’m sure Ill have many more as months roll on!
Another one of our interchangeable “galleries” in our kitchen is this little memento/blackboard I made last year. The decal is from the awesomely talented illustrator, Shanna Murray and the frameless blackboard is from Billy Boards. My kids play with my Fuji Instax most and this is where I display their random little photos with washi tape. They LOVE that camera and they love it even more when we tape up their photos!
Here is our eclectic little fireplace mantle. These photos change out quite frequently here too. We’re in this room the most so I usually have my current favorites of our kids framed here.
This is my office or what I like to call “the desk at the top of the stairs where i can see everything“. Even after 5 years, Ive never really been able to decide what I want to hang above that desk so I ended up randomly propping stuff up against it. (Perfect for the lazy lady, no hammer or nails needed.) I printed up this little 20×30 calendar template from Paislee Press this year instead of opting for my regular monthly flip gig. I love it because it gives the look of a big organized gallery without too much thought. I printed this through WHCC using their 2mm Styrene so it could prop up easily without a frame.
I also recently framed this group of photobooth strips our family took on a recent trip to Santa Monica Pier. I am a sucker for a good old fashioned photobooth! The new ones just don’t cut it in my opinion; I like the faded old nostalgic 70s look.
This funky little gallery runs along our staircase and entry way. I usually change up the photos in here about every 6 months. Some of the good ol’ favorites stay and some frames I change out more than others. I’m not going to lie, this was the biggest pain in the BUTT to create- I was spray painting and hanging for over a week. That being said, there is not a day that goes by that I’m not elated I hung all these. About 2 years ago, I ended up scrounging together all my ugly old mismatched frames that had no place in our home and spray painted them either a matte black or matte eggshell. I added art mattes to some from Aaron Brothers and left some without. I might clean it up someday but I kinda like the randomness of it for now. Oh, and that little print smack in the middle is from Studio Mela, one of my favorite print shops on Etsy. I just felt overwhelmingly that “Let Love In” was just kind of a perfect theme for this gallery.
Thanks, Shannon!

And stay tuned a little later on TODAY for a fun giveaway contest!  

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Art Display Project | Gretchen Davis

January 26, 2012
I am loving all the color in Gretchen Davis’s post today.  The interchangeable system she has for small prints is genius!  And I am adding albums to my to-do list this year for sure.  Come take a look!

 

One of my favorite things about having photos displayed in our home is being able to remember little things about my family and how we’ve grown and changed just by walking through a room. About six months ago we moved and the house we live in now doesn’t have as much wall space as the one we left, so many of the things I had printed and up in our old house are stored away until we move again in about 18 months. However, in a wonderful trade off, this house has tons of windows and light so I’m snapping away with lots of new material to print and fill our future walls. This tiny little room I’m sharing is sort of an office or den space in between two bedrooms. It may be small, but we walk through it many times through the day, and its right by the boy’s bedroom so it ends up being a place where I help them get ready for school, or read a book before bed and more often then not fold the never ending laundry, so its a great place to have some of our favorite memories out.
First, over the daybed, there are about 50 5×5 prints, mostly from the 52 on fridays project from 2010. I initially printed about 100 5x5s, so these can be changed out when ever I have a new favorite to add. I love that they move around and it seems like a new one always catches my eye when I’m in here. I like to have lots of images of our families who are pretty far away so that their faces can still be a familiar in our home! The boys love looking through these and remembering where we were when they were taken.
To the left of the room, there is a small built in bookcase, I’m constantly on the look out for new items that represent a trip or a cherished family member to keep here. There are small art work pieces here we’ve found different places, a few cherished baby items from when the boys were tiny, and some practical items that are used lots, like a current knitting project and our laptop. I also have a 24×36 gallery wrapped canvas of my youngest, Sam on the bottom shelf and the matching 24×36 canvas of his brother Gabe is on a small wall area next to the doorway. I love how canvas adds texture to a photograph, and I love these two images of my boys, I still remember the day I took those! These were printed from WHCC as were all of the other prints in this room.
On the top shelf, two 12×12 standouts live side by side, these are older images of the boys when they were ‘babies’ and these have already lived a couple of different places in our new house, and I’m not sure this is their final home either! There are also a few albums and an 11×14 framed print that live on these shelves too.
One our our most cherished albums is the 10×8 album from Loktah that holds some of my favorite images from our family session with Raye Law. I love the textural feel to the paper on the pages in this album and especially the handmade cover. I’ve been using Loktah with my clients for a couple of years and adore all their products. There are also a couple of 5×5 albums from Finao that hold some of my favorite sessions that I’ve shot with my boys. I think albums are a wonderful way to display a session, especially if you don’t have tons of space to hang larger prints. If you keep them out like ours are, they get a tons of viewing and its nice to be able to have so many images from the same session all displayed.
The last thing I picked to photograph is the the print box, also from Loktah. It holds between 400-500 5x7s and I haven’t quite filled it up yet. Even though this images are tucked away out of site, I feel like they do get seen when we have friends and family over and this little system helps me feel like I have some extra security against losing the digital version of our family favorites since its easy to send off a few prints at a time with a client order and not have to worry about where they’ll be displayed. I like to print the ones that go in this little box with the white border, it looks like it may be time for a new box soon!
Thank you Wendy for letting my share my cozy little space on your blog! I love clicking through all the talented photographers you’ve featured and seeing all the different ways they’ve used photographs in their homes! I know just where I’ll be looking for inspiration when we move again and have new walls to fill!
Thanks, Gretchen!
Stay tuned tomorrow for a fabulous giveaway!
AND

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Art Display Project | Kristin Young

January 24, 2012

Continuity.  One of the things my home is lacking.  One of the things I LOVE about Kristin Young’s home and art displays.  I adore how she chose a theme and stuck with it and how everything flows so well.  I may be a tiny bit envious of those amazing huge frames from Pottery Barn.  And I may or may not be in the midst of a chalkboard/clipboard display project myself.  Kristin, we miss you out here in Northern California but love that you are just a mouse click away and thrilled that you joined in on this project.  

 

Can I just tell you how excited I was when Wendy asked if I could be a part of her Art Display series this month? It was just the kick I needed to fill in the empty frames (yes, I had frames up, but they were empty) on our walls. When we sold our home and moved cross-country last year, I decided to change the walls in our house. I wanted to put away all our fine arts painting and just put up black and whites images of our family framed in black frames with white mats.

My goal was to let our walls reflect us….where we had been and where we are at the moment. In order to do that, the easiest thing (and possibly the cheapest) was to start collecting frames from all over and slip photos in as I wanted. I love gallery wraps but did not want to be tied to the same images on the walls nor did I want to use up wall space with just a couple of images (plus I like to change it up as I take pictures and have new favorites).

Above my kids workstation, I hung six square frames…

Around the kitchen and back entryway are most of the frames…

I used chalkboard clipboards to hang these set of three.

I purchased art hangers from Pottery barn years ago. Now I like to hang the kid’s artwork and some black + white photos to display their art.

The only color frames I hung were these four…discontinued from Pottery Barn years ago, but I still love them.

Near one entryway, I chose to hang different sized frames…

We have another hallway that is long and dark, but has these great art spotlights. I chose to hang several different sized frames in groups of three or two. The really big 48×48 frames are from Pottery Barn. I loved them, but sadly haven’t taken the perfect photos for them….yet.

In one of the girls’ rooms, I hung three 11×14 frames over the bed.

In my office/craft room, I wanted to get a little creative so I got these frames and attached string and chicken wire to the back of them to hang up Polaroids.

Finally, my inspiration boards near and above my computer. Random pictures are tacked up along with my kid’s artwork and whatnots.

Now the fun part for me will be to change the images within the frames and wait to see who notices in my family.

Thank you Wendy for doing such a great series. It has been fun to pour over old pictures and put everything together!


 

Thank you, Kristin!

If you’ve missed any of my guest bloggers for this project, you can find the right here:
Joyce Smith

StaceyWoods

Aubry Startin

Breeze Floyd

Tamara Burross

Carey Pace

Nancy Lary

Jules Trandem

Gail Pomare

Elisabeth Ross

Amy Lockheart

Jasmine Johnson

Hope Toliver

Kristina Buskirk

SaraTegman

Misti Dawson

Deb Schwedhelm 

Jennifer Nguyen

 Jolie Starrett 

Val Spring 

Jasmine Sargent

Ali Crane 

Jobrina Hofleit

Rachel Chaney

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Art Display Project | Rachel Chaney

January 23, 2012

When I read through Rachel Chaney’s blog post a few weeks ago after she sent it, I was blown away by her beautiful home and lovely art displays, but the one thing that has been swimming around in my mind since that day is her philosophy of sharing the prints of her kids with her kids.  As in, give them their own copies.  So often I’m too concerned with  keeping the photos tucked away from sticky hands so that I can get the prints in frames, that I don’t consider how important it is to my kids to be able to have copies of their very own.  Take a look at Rachel’s beautiful art and be sure to read what she says at the end of the post.

Thank you, Wendy, for inviting me to share how our family enjoys the photos
that I take.  I have already been inspired by the display ideas so far.  It
has been interesting to see how the display ideas are often a continuation
of a photographer’s photographic style.

This year I made a 5×7 flat family stationary card.  The front features a
collage of some of my favorite images of our family.  The back simply has an
outlined “frame” on all four sides to accommodate a handwritten note.  I
like that this card allows people to get to know us a bit better.  It is a
way for us to reach out to other people, share our family story, and use my
art all at the same time.

I took the plunge and got a gallery wrap canvas of each of my kids when the
canvases went on sale.  These hang on a small wall in a hallway that runs
alongside my open kitchen.  I love that I can see these when I eat my cereal
in the morning and when I am prepping dinner.
I plan on refreshing these periodically with newer images and dispersing the
older ones throughout the house.

Each year I dream of sitting down to build a proper family yearbook album.
I haven’t done it yet because I am too busy at the end of the year.
However, in the meantime, I enjoy printing up our family’s “greatest hits”
from the past year in a bound proof book.  This particular books holds about
80+ photos from the past year.  They are 4×6 prints on 5×7 paper, spiral
bound with a clear cover. I don’t have to put in any design time in terms of
album layout (other than simply putting them in the order I want).  I like
that I can carry this book around and share it with other people.  I make
several copies and give them out to grandparents and great grandparents for
Christmas.  They’re a big hit with them.  
I am passionate about telling my family’s story–not just taking portraits.
I like that these proof books allow me to print and share everyday moments
that I probably would never blow up as a canvas and hang on a wall.  For
example, I took this image of my daughter with her permission when she was
very sick.  I like the way she is holding onto her doll while she is
watching TV.  I like that it shares the honest truth about family life.
Family life isn’t just birthdays, smiles, and “perfect” outfits.  It is also
life shared in sometimes challenging circumstances.

This bulletin board hangs just a few steps inside our front door alongside
our dining room.
Whenever I’m ordering prints for clients, I just snatch up a few favorite,
recent family photos.  I like the flexibility this bulletin board offers.  I
don’t have to worry about aspect ratios or filling a specific sized hole in
a frame with a specific sized print.  The bulletin board, like the proof
book, allows me to enjoy and display certain photographic stories that I
wouldn’t enlarge to display on a wall. It is one of the first things people
see when they come into our house.

I have another smaller bulletin board right by my computer.  You can post
images using magnets or push pins.
Here’s the link:
http://www.containerstore.com/shop?productId=10000382&N=&Ns=p_sales_quantity
%7C1&Ntt=magnetic+board

Oh, and one other little note. . .
I try to regularly give my kids loose prints of our family–especially of
images that feature them.  I tell them thank you with my words when I
photograph them.  I tell them thank you with my actions when I share the
finished product.  These prints get wrinkled and fall behind their beds, but
they eventually end up in some “secret stash” tucked away in one of their
drawers.

Thanks, Rachel!

If you’ve missed any of my guest bloggers for this project, you can find the right here:
Joyce Smith

StaceyWoods

Aubry Startin

Breeze Floyd

Tamara Burross

Carey Pace

Nancy Lary

Jules Trandem

Gail Pomare

Elisabeth Ross

Amy Lockheart

Jasmine Johnson

Hope Toliver

Kristina Buskirk

SaraTegman

Misti Dawson

Deb Schwedhelm 

Jennifer Nguyen

 Jolie Starrett 

Val Spring 

Jasmine Sargent

Ali Crane 

Jobrina Hofleit

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Art Display Project | Jobrina Hofleit

January 23, 2012

I’m starting to regret this project, only because there are so many ideas I want to try and not enough wall space in my house!  Jobrina Hofleit’s home is full of amazing ideas!  That screen door is awesome!  As is her son’s room with the clipboards.  I know I will be giving that idea a try, I just have to decide where.  Take a look…  (Oh, and I kept her wording blue because it matches her home so well.  And because I have no idea how to change it back to black.  LOL)

 

We have recently moved into a new home (a rental, which limits me on what I can and cannot do for the time being) and my #1 priority was to get family images up on the walls ASAP to help us feel more at home.  Then the busy holiday season hit and it all kind of got put on the back burner.  So when Wendy asked if I’d like to be a part of her amazing idea called “Art Display Project”, I didn’t have to think twice, I was completely on board!  Now I had NO excuses, I was ready to get our walls filled with canvases and framed images that had been sitting in boxes, along with starting a new “wall” project I was so badly wanting to do.

As soon as you walk into our entry way, I have placed this old refurbished screen door, that my super talented friend made for me.  It’s great cause we are constantly changing out the chalkboard to new inspirational sayings and then the bottom portion with the chicken wire is so great to add and change out current and past 5×7 prints.

Here in the family room I’ve placed a couple of our 16×20 canvas wraps.  I’m such a huge fan of canvases, so great that they come ready to hang.

Here is our son’s room, I couldn’t wait to do this idea I found on pinterest.  I hung 6 standard sized clip boards and clipped 8×10 prints and am pretty happen with the outcome. Love that I can change out the images periodically.  Then we have another 16×20 canvas wrap of our son, Raney, and our 10 year old golden, Koda, hung in his bathroom.

This next set is up in our windy hallway, which is pretty narrow and actually really hard to “take” pictures of. Ha!  I had been wanting to do a wall in these squared white frames forever and couldn’t wait to get it done once I knew I was doing this project.  These are 20×20′s and there are six of them and they are holding pictures of our family’s most recent photo session this past December, self-timer and all.  I absolutely LOVE these frames, they are a great size and stand out just the way I had envisioned them to.

Towards the end of the hallway these ledges hold older images of when our son was a newborn and images of all of us when he was 6 months old.

We bought this huge wood frame about two years ago from another very talented local girl and it sits in this spot as you enter into our master bedroom for now, I love looking at it and being reminded of when our family started. ;-)

 

Thank you, Jobrina!

f you’ve missed any of my guest bloggers for this project, you can find the right here:
Joyce Smith

StaceyWoods

Aubry Startin

Breeze Floyd

Tamara Burross

Carey Pace

Nancy Lary

Jules Trandem

Gail Pomare

Elisabeth Ross

Amy Lockheart

Jasmine Johnson

Hope Toliver

Kristina Buskirk

SaraTegman

Misti Dawson

Deb Schwedhelm 

Jennifer Nguyen

 Jolie Starrett 

Val Spring 

Jasmine Sargent

Ali Crane 

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