I’m delighted to share with you today the home pictures of Allison Parker, a newborn and baby photographer in my hometown, Houston, Texas–specifically The Woodlands. Her website, Feather Nest Photography is filled with lots of beautiful eye candy. Â She shares several different room displays–I love it!
I love this series about decorating with your pictures. It’s one of my favorite topics and it is so interesting to see how different people choose to use their photography to make their house a home! I love decorating . . . but more than anything, what makes me happy about my house is having my favorite images just about everywhere I look. Here are some of my favorite ways to decorate with pictures and a couple of inexpensive DIY tricks;o) They have to be super simple or I don’t have the attention for it!
First, and this is my favorite trick, using cheap “art” to mount your own large prints. I originally priced four 30×30 inch gallery framed prints from my lab for a huge wall in our sitting area.
For me, spending almost a grand (wholesale) was not an option only because I am terribly fickle and I change my mind about every 6 months. These frames have been in place for a little over a year & I’ve already changed the prints 4 times:o)
Here is what I did . . . go to your local Garden Ridge or the like. Put your blinders on and look for frames that fit your decor only. I knew I wanted the clean black line of these beautiful (totally being sarcastic) tree prints below. Grab some spray photo adhesive at Wal-mart, pop out the “artwork” and use that to mount your new prints onto. This will keep them from warping or bubbling! You don’t need glass and unless you are getting the really nice “museum quality” glass it just degrades your print anyway. I get mine linen textured so it looks a little extra nice up close. It literally took me longer to unpackage my prints than it did to mount and hang them.
Unless you are impulsive and reckless like me, this is a 2-person job . . . the print sticks fast & you can’t pull it up once it’s down.
Next, print your favorite quotes, scriptures, symbols, etc on paper and slap it in a frame for a collage wall. I LOVE doing this because you can change it over and over at no cost. Play around with right justified text like the blue print I just printed on my laser jet below (stairwell collage below). Mix in your child’s artwork, a couple of nice screen prints from etsy or something similar and your gallery wall just went up 10 points!
Now, this is my favorite way to decorate with pictures, and while not cheap, WORTH IT. . . I like true photographic print, layflat artbooks. This is what I sell all of my clients from their newborn sessions and this is what I treasure the most in my home. Good photography in a well designed book is priceless. My favorite things about photographic art books:, 1) it can sit in an easel and you can display a different page any given day without filling your walls, 2) it can stack on a table with your other coffee table books and add color, 3) they are archival and will stand the test of time , and 4) it can lay flat on the table to be displayed another way. My family enjoys looking through their entire session that my friend, Leah Cook, shot for us last year. The best part is all the images are in one place for me to pass on to them someday. The good ones, the silly ones and the pouty ones;o)
Thanks for inviting me to be a part of this month’s topic on decorating with pictures, Kristen!
You can find Allison on her website, Feather Nest Photography, Facebook, and her BLOG.
{If you’ve missed the other contributors shares in this month long series, click here to see thumbnails of all of them.}
