Turning Note Cards Into Wall Art: a house log

Well well well, if is not those little photography note cards again. You know, the ones we picked up on our anniversary from a local art gallery to hang in our bathroom? You might not even have registered them in that post since everyone went bananas over the whole Sherry-haircut thing.

 

Anyway, hanging them in the bathroom was the initial plan. Until I noticed some of the photo colors were in the same neighborhood as our framed $5 scrapbook paper. That neighborhood being Sue-the-Napkin-ville. Or is it Sue-the-Napkin Heights?

We figured that perhaps our $4 a pop Sherri Conley note cards were destined to live in these eight frames (plus we could not decide on a configuration for the bathroom, so we liked the idea of enjoying them out in the living room). But it meant we had to get four more of them first, so we shucked out another $16 to round out our “local art collection” (from Crossroads Gallery here in Richmond).

The idea was to add the small square of art into the middle of the colored paper square that already sat inside the square frame. Thereby making the colored square of paper into a lively little colored square mat. Wow, plenty of squares going on. We are one do-si-do short of a square dance.

First we had to cut our rectangular note cards into… you will never guess… squares. I used an exacto and a ruler to keep my lines straight, but was brave sufficient to simply eye the placement of my slice. Yup, my middle name should be Danger. Or soda. Or both. John Danger Soda Petersik. I like it.

As you can see, we left a thin white border on the pictures to, I dunno, further emphasize their squareness? They sort of looked like little polaroids to us.

Then one by one the frames came off the wall so the photos could be scotch taped into place on each colorful background which essentially became the “mat.” To get them centered we eyed them, then used a yardstick to make sure they were in fact centered. To do that we simply lined up the yardstick across two opposite corners, and then repeated that with the other two corners to make sure they seemed to intersect equally.

At last, everything was reframed and ready for our viewing pleasure.

Only problem, we were not totally psyched by the result. We did not mind the small size (it simply makes us want to lean in and take a closer look) – although I know some folks might think bigger is better (that is what she said). Our issue was that something about them was truly interrupt-ish and busy and, well, simply too square-y (it honestly looks better in pictures than it did in real life). And yes, the reflection on the glass totally bites for taking pics, but we are not quite ready to splurge on eight panes of museum glass simply yet.

We realized the white borders I left on when trimming the note cards might be the problem. It made the distinction between the photo and the colorful mat so defined that we kind of lost the lively coincidence that each pairing was sort of linked by color. So rather than the paper feeling like an extension of the art’s hues, it simply felt like a compact picture on top of a thick bright mat on top of a thick white mat. It was a square vortex and it was threatening to eat our brains.

So after a few days of living with it (and not growing any fonder) Sherry took it upon herself to remedy the situation. And since she has a much steadier hand than I do, she did not even use a level and an exacto (simply a regular old scissors). Cocky much?

Of course her cuts were strong. And now we have this:

We like it muuuuch better – especially in real life. Although we are the first to admit that for some reason the white framed note cards did not photograph as crazily as they looked in person, so there is not as much of an obvious improvement from the square-on-square-on-square action that was going on before. But in person it was such a relief. We worried we might have to scrap the whole note card idea entirely, but once they were trimmed down and put back in place, all was right with the world. Or at least with the left wall of our living room.

We like that they feel less busy and that subtlety is much preferred. They do not scream “check-me-out!!!” but are pleasant when your eyes meander around the room and happen to land on them. So for a total of $4.64 per frame (64 cents for the scrapbook paper backgrounds and $4 a pop for the photo note cards) we are psyched.

I still would not go as far as to call this our forever art solution for these frames. We have learned our lesson when it comes to making those sort of giant declarations since our house is consistently a WIP (work in progress). Not to be confused with an ORB (even though Sherry is certainly demonstrating her undying enjoy of all things oil-rubbed-bronze). So we think adding these small photographs are a good warm-up for us since they might end up laying the ground work for something else that we may want to transition to a bit further down the line. So let us call it a baby step. We have introduced some small photography, so perhaps in a while we will try some larger photography, rehang the note card photos somewhere else, and scrap the 60 cent scrapbook paper altogether… who knows.

What I do know is that looking at some of these photos makes me want to go on a ferris wheel. Oh, and eat funnel cake. Yeah, certainly that.

Has anyone else made any art-y updates lately? Or used note cards as wall decor? Or gotten sucked into a square vortex, never to be seen or heard from again? Well, if you have, I guess you would not be able to comment…

Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it is you (plus the $15 discount code for everyone is still valid until August 31st).