DIY Deck of Cards Wall Art

What I Made Today - Bathroom Reveal Part 2

You may have seen my earlier post on how to wallpaper using book pages here. I love the little feature wall in our downstairs bathroom now but wanted to make some artwork to accompany it. I had picked up this little pack of herb playing cards in the local charity shop because the botanical theme matched the book of wild flowers I used to paper so perfectly, but I wasn't sure how I was going to use the cards for a while. This is what I came up with!

If you'd like to make your own artwork using an illustrated deck of cards, here is a super easy tutorial...

What you will need

A pack of cards

A box frame

Small sticky foam pads

Paint or wood stain, paintbrush (optional)

Backing paper and double-sided tape (optional)

Method

I began by selecting the suite I wanted from the pack of cards - I considered mixing them up but felt it might look a little messy, so went for the hearts. I then laid them out on the box frame and decided how to arrange them.

My box frame (12x12") was £6.50 from Wilkos and is square, but I did have to leave the Ace card out because of this - if you buy a portrait frame you could include the Ace on a row of its own.

I next took the box frame apart and painted it. I wanted a darker colour to frame the white playing cards and so I used a tester pot of Cuprinol exterior wood stain in 'Wild Thyme' that I had lurking in the shed - and was quite pleased with how it turned out. I'm a big believer in making use of whatever is available in the shed!

If you are unsure what colour to paint your frame, I would suggest picking a colour out of the card illustrations. Or you can't go far wrong with buying a black frame!

Remember to paint all the parts of the box frame that you will see when it is reassembled, like this spacer section that fits between the glass and the back of the frame.

While the frame dries, you can start to stick the cards to the back of the box frame. I decided to leave the back of my frame unfinished, as the brown colour worked well with the dark green in my botanical theme. If you want to cover your board, however, now is the time to fix your backing paper to it - I suggest using double-sided tape around the outside edges for a clean finish.

Tip: check you have the frame's hanger in the right place before you start sticking cards down!

Spot the not-so-deliberate mistake!

To fix the cards, I used small sticky foam pads, as seen in the pic. I got these from Hobbycraft but most stationers' or large supermarkets stock them. The foam pads give each card a drop shadow, and means they stand in relief from the back of the frame. I love the extra interest this creates. 

If you are just wanting to place your cards flush(!) against the backing then you could use a normal frame instead, as the extra space a box frame gives you would not be necessary.

When your cards are fixed on and your box frame paint is dry, reassemble the frame and voila! Your playing card artwork is complete.

I felt a bit sorry for the Ace card being left out and so made him a frame of his own! I painted the backboard to this small frame the same colour as the box frame to tie in the colours.

must. buy. a. good. camera.

Now I just need to hang it along with a few other pieces!

DIY Wallpapering with Book Pages

What I Made Today - Bathroom Reveal Part 1

We have a downstairs loo off our utility room - very handy but not very pretty. It's a small window-less white box, which needed a bit of an update. I've had a bit of a thing for vintage botanical prints and repro wallpapers for a while, and was looking out for one I loved enough to buy to use in there, then realised I could do it myself!

There are some fantastic wallpapers out there, but if you are on a budget or fancy doing it yourself, here is my 'how to' wallpaper using book pages. 

What you will need

• A book of your choice - be it colour, illustrated, sepia or simply text.
• A paper guillotine, or craft knife and ruler, or pair of scissors!
• Wallpaper paste
• A wallpaper brush, or a large paintbrush
• A firm clean paintbrush
• Plumb-line (optional)
• A damp cloth

Method

Start by ripping the spine and cover off your book, or by pulling out the signatures. I picked up my book from an antiques centre for a couple of quid - try charity shops, car boots or eBay for similar.

Once you've done this you may have bits of glue or binding thread attached to the edge of your pages, so it's a good idea to trim the edges so that you have a neat finish and so that all the pages are a uniform size for when you are papering.

This is where a paper guilottine comes in handy. If you don't have one, a craft knife and ruler will work well, or failing that a pair of scissors and a steady hand! Try to cut through as many pages as possible at one time.

Now you are ready to start papering! The handy thing about small book pages is that you don't need a large wallpapering table, a small work surface will do. Using your wallpaper or large paint brush, apply a layer of wallpaper paste to the back of several book pages. It's a good idea to leave the paper for a few minutes to let the paste soak in, so do a couple at a time - but don't leave them so long that the paste starts to dry out.

Now start applying the pages to your wall. I began in the top-left corner of my wall and didn't use a plumbline - I placed them by eye - but you could use one for increased accuracy. If you don't have a plumbline, tying a key or something with a bit of weight to a length of string will work just as well. Place the first page against the wall, pressing it lightly with your hands. Now take your dry, clean firm brush and, starting from the middle of the page, sweep it towards the edges of the book page. Your aim is to fix the page to the wall without any big lumps of paste or air bubbles.

I overlapped my book pages ever so slightly - just by a few millimeters - to give me some room for movement and error, but a mismatched higgldy piggldy look could also look fab if you want to lay your pages over each other in a more exaggerated way.

You may get little bits of wallpaper paste seeping out the edge of your book pages - use your slightly damp cloth to wipe it off while it's still damp - when it dries it will leave a shiny mark and will be much harder to remove.

Carry on pasting and papering your wall until you have covered your desired area - if you come to the other end or the bottom of your wall and the pages overlap, use your craft knife and ruler to trim the excess.

The bathroom is small so this is the furthest away I can get to take a photo of the whole wall!

Next I am planning to make some artwork for the other walls to carry on the botanical print theme - watch out for the tutorial for this pack of cards artwork in the next part of the bathroom reveal!

Five Of The Best Map Walls

Or, Proof That It's Acceptable To Use Maps In Every Room in Your House

If you saw my earlier post about DIY Printable Map Artwork here, you will have seen that I have a thing about using maps, on everything. I would probably use them in every room if it wasn't for that annoying nagging feeling that that would be overkill ...

But if you would like to transform your house into a gallery of cartography here is a run down of five of the best map walls!

Click on the pics to follow through to the source.

Living Room - pair with a vintage Chesterfield and battered old trunk-cum-coffee table for a shabby chic travel look

Dining Room - draw out one of the map's colours in a bright pop, like this table, and team with old school chairs for a fun and retro feel that takes you back to the classroom

Office - use local area maps in a limited colour palette for a more sophisticated feel. The layering of the pages of this map create a blueprint look that echoes architectural drawings and creates a professional, fresh vibe

Children's Room - Use a country or state- specific map to give bigger blocks of colour. The colours and straight, graphic lines from the map are repeated in the floor and upholstery coverings, making it the perfect bold and inspirational space for a child

Bedroom - the sepia vintage city map provides a monochrome colour palette that is repeated in the natural woods and soft white lines of this bedroom, creating a relaxing and sophisticated boutique hotel feel

All in all, proof that maps can be used in any room, to create a whole range of moods and looks. How have you styled your map wall?

DIY Printable Map Wall Art

The Meandering Mississippi 

You may not know this yet based on this blog, but I have a slight obsession with maps. This is slightly ironic as I have a terrible sense of direction and an only-just-acceptable understanding of geography, but I love maps to look at. Something about the level of detail, use of text and a pretty, easy-to-read colour palette really draws me in. My dad is your typical, original map lover - they help him navigate and understand the world - and I think he finds my use of maps around my home quite amusing...

Just a few things that stayed still for too long and got covered in maps in my home...

Anyway, if you are reading this the chances are you have at the very least a small appreciation of the way I feel, and so here is how you can create your own map art for the home with minimal effort!

The meandering Mississippi makes for beautiful DIY artwork 

You Will Need

• Access to a computer
• Frame(s) of your choice

That's it!

Method

To begin, you will need to select the map artwork you would like to print. 

The artwork I chose was frames 1-3 of a stunning vintage 22-frame series of maps of the Mississippi River and the courses it has taken over it's long, long history. Each colour on the map represents the route the river took at that given period in time. Beautiful, huh? I came across this map on Pinterest (of course) and if you follow this link to Visual News you too can download and use this map from the ERDC.

See how the plates line up? Mine are hung portrait next to each other due to space, but hanging them portrait one above the other, or landscape next to each other, will give you a stunning display.

After downloading the zip file and choosing the plates I wanted (I just picked 1,2 and 3...) I then uploaded the jpgs to Photobox (other online printers are available, Snapfish, Vistaprint - whoever you prefer). I chose to print mine A3 size on gloss photo paper and then bought cheap plastic (rather than glass) frames from Wilkinsons. You could order different sizes or even create a collage and order three or more of the plates as one linked-up image.

When your prints arrive, simply frame and hang! Decorating your room around them is optional ... But you could use coloured mounts or frames in any of the colours used in the maps. Picking out one of the primary colours would make this look great in a kid's room, or they could look stunning against a slate grey office wall for a more masculine look.

This DIY cost around £30 in total - bargain!

Using different artwork

If you would like to use a different map, there are some other free printable maps suggested over at Maybemej Photography, or you could do a search on Pinterest or Google.

Maybemej free collage sheet of maps

The two main things to bear in mind when choosing your map(s) are Size and Copyright.

Unfortunately, you can't simply save an image displayed on a webpage onto your computer and then print it. To display an image on a webpage clearly an image's dpi (dots per inch) only needs to be very low, around 70dpi, but to print an image clearly the dpi needs to be at least 266. So any image you lift from a website is going to be too small to print from (not to mention likely a copyright infringement). What you need to look for are images that you can download to your computer, like these Mississippi maps, as they are going to be a much larger file size to then print from. As a very broad rule of thumb, I would steer clear of any image that is less than 1MB. 

Copyright isn't something to worry too much about if you are only intending to hang the maps on you own walls, and if someone is offering a map as a free printable then it's highly likely they own or have cleared the copyright so you don't need to worry. If in doubt, ask the website owner as, clearly, you don't want to be ripping off someone's work. 

Send me a pic of how the maps look in your home!

Take a look at other ways to decorate your home using maps in my other blog post here, and on my Pinterest page 'Travel Room' here.