A Black Wall

Once again, Pinterest has stuck an idea in my head. 

This time it was this photo of an art wall in between kid's bedrooms. 

It's no secret I very much enjoy getting messy and creative. Now, one of our walls is dedicated to showcasing our crafty work. Walking by my toddlers' art framed on the wall makes me smile.

When our friend Darrell had put the chair rail up, and then started applying the black chalk paint, I started having second thoughts. A BLACK WALL?!? In our traditional/cottageish type home?

Even Annette said, "Black is not my favorite color". Just a few seconds later she backed into the wet paint in one of her much loved MJ outfits. Luckily, Pinterest came to the rescue again and I was able to tediously wash out all the black marks down the backside of her dress with some elbow grease.

Here are some photos of this project as it went along...

Handy Darrell putting chair rail and paint on the wall while Annette asks a million questions.

Yes, most people would have just done this step themselves, but Darrell was over doing some other handy stuff for us so I let him do this part.

I got these amazing 'tap in' sawtooth hangers from amazon the other day. I didn't want to make a special trip to a hardware store toting the kids along, so I used my amazon prime student/teacher account (which I LOVE and get for free because I have an edu address with my Saturday teaching job). They were so easy to just tap in. No itty bitty screws to try to nail into the frame without hammering my own finger in the process.  Only downside... I stepped barefoot on one of these laying face up on the floor. It hurt quite a lot. 

Yet, these made hanging lots of different frames so much easier and quicker. 

Otherwise, I would have been trying to hang the frames using the existing doo dads that come on the back of some frames. And those things drive me nuts. I had many of the frames already in different stashes around the house. I did buy some at Savers and Goodwill. I didn't pay over 1.50 for any of them and found some of them for free. The one below says 2.99 but I have a stash of coupons for Savers from past donations we've made. Love Savers.

Once I collected all my frames, I started spraying 

I figured I'd want to change out some of the artwork pretty often, so I made a cork board frame to allow me to just pin and rotate new art as it is created. Pinterest inspired of course. May need to make another cork one, as it seems to be a hit with my kids. 

I got some of this adhesive cork stuff from Home Depot a while back. It's like 10 bucks for the roll. If I did it over again, I would have been on the lookout for a cheap old cork bulletin board at Savers to re-use. Probably would have saved me money on this item.

And ta-da! It's complete :))

New messes on their way!