{diy: guestroom collage & revolving guest frame}

happy monday!

The weekend is over and now it’s back to the grind. This weekend was a fun one! Our wonderful friend Giselle was in town for her first visit to Atlanta and of course we showed her a grand time. This was also an especially hot weekend! It was really sad at night when we were out dancing and would go from the sweaty dance floor to the outdoor deck---and there was no change in temperature! Ack! I hope these super hot summer nights are few and far between.

Today’s post is about two diy projects I worked on last week and finished last night (at 4AM!---I’m kind of a night owl). I’m so happy with the end results; they’re beautiful additions to our home.

First I’ll share the guestroom collage. In our guestroom there is a wall next to the bed that was bare for months. I would always stare at it and think of several different ideas for it. I had tons of frames and paintings I could put up but nothing really seemed to inspire me. Last week I decided it was time to make a decision already and just play around with what I had. I also searched around the net for some inspirations which helped quite a bit.

I decided to create a collage with matching color frames and a mix of diy prints and photos. I also came up with a cool idea for the collage to personalize the room for our guests---more on that later.

First, I laid out all my frames on the floor and moved them around until I found a set-up I really liked. I also had to spray paint two of the frames to match all of the other black frames.

 

Next, I laid out my prints and photos on top of the frames to get an idea of what the collage would look like. I wanted a good mix to make it more interesting.

This included:

instagram headshots of the hubs and I

a wooden “E” for Ellis with painted chevron

 subway art of some important places & dates

our wedding invite and rsvp card

 a piece of fabric with a little 3D detail

interesting printed stock paper

photos of some special people

My collage had a blend of matted and non-matted photos. I also wanted to include snippets of our guestroom colors: green, blue, grey, and white. I can never pick just one or two colors...haha.

After I was done moving prints and photos around I was ready to hang my collage up. Now, I hang frames by eyeballing where I want everything to be. It usually works out and I make very few errors. However, I found a great tutorial over at Young House Love for those of you who want to make extra sure that your collage comes out perfect.

It came out pretty nicely, don’t you think? I’m super happy with it. Of course some things will be rotated out overtime.

And now for the coolest part of the whole collage; the revolving guest frame.

I’m all about making memorable experiences, especially for any visitors we get our way. One idea I thought of was to display photos of our guests in the guestroom so they can feel special when they come over. However, we have tons of friends and family, but not enough frames. At first I thought of rotating out photos of our guests in the frames, however, that would have been time consuming and I don’t think our IKEA frames could’ve handled it (the tabs closing in the photos are kind of weak). But then I remembered the idea we used for displaying childhood photos at our wedding---clipping photos to string in an empty frame. It was perfect and fit in very nicely in the collage. Basically, I took a large empty frame, added eye screws to the sides, and strung twine from one side to the other. I used teeny clothesline clips to attach the photos to the twine.

Whenever guests come over, we’ll clip in photos of them and print out duplicates as a little souvenir. It’s just a small detail to make our guests feel extra special when they stay with us. If you look closely you can get a sneak peek of who’s coming to visit nextJ

And that’s all. What do you do to make your guests feel welcome? I always love hearing new ideas.

So long for now,

The Mrs.