Wall Art

I'm a big fan of things you can hang on the wall.  Typically things you hang on the wall aren't super useful, unless you consider making your environment a much more interesting, inspiring, and happy place a useful thing...which I suppose I do.  I thought I'd share some of the "useful things" we have hanging around our house!  :)

This first picture is an antique framed photo I got at a yard sale this summer.  I added black pointy hats to a good number of the school children here for no real good reason.  Aren't they cute!

 

This is Ben's prized find of the year....a mid-century school map of North America.  We saw it at a barn sale for $75 and Ben hemmed and hawed about it and decided not to get it (it was huge and despite having an entire Victorian house at our hanging disposal, we don't have tons of wall space and even less huge wall space).  After pining after it for months, Ben decided to go back to that barn and hope it was still there.  It was!  After paying the neighbor of the people who owned it, since they weren't actually there (fingers crossed it got back to them!), Ben and I brought it home and hung it on our bedroom wall.  I stare at it every morning when I wake up and must say that I'm now getting quite proficient in North American geography!

This is my prized find of the year and this guy has a similar story to Ben's map...except instead of pining for months...I only pined for a week before I went back for it.  It was at an antiques shop a few towns over and after seeing it, couldn't get it out of my head!  I don't really know any of the story behind it, but I was drawn to it because it looks like Santa Claus without actually definitively being Santa Claus.  I actually think of him more as a fisherman...who is really secretly Santa Claus is disguise....or something like that.  Plus the quality of the painting is so nice, with great detail and delicate brush strokes.  And a cool frame to boot.  He greets people now at the top of the stairs. 

This is a painting that hung in my grandparent's house.  It's quite large and has amazingly thick paint texture.  I had always admired it when I was a kid and thought "wow how much paint they must have used up to create this painting with such chunky stokes".  It now proudly hangs in our hallway. 

 This painting too was from my grandparent's.  And jovial scene...it reminds me that you don't need TV or laptops to have fun!

 I found this guy along with the school children in the first photo and gave him a bit of a makeover too with a paper hat and mustache.  ...And I named him Fred.

 And of course his friend James, who Ben keeps thinking is a girl for some reason.  I gave him cat ears and a mask. 

Hanging next to Fred and James are the bird silhouettes.  These were so much fun to make!  I have several large bird books and a had a stack of old paper of varying shades of white and off-white and traced or copied them before carefully cutting them out.  This was one of those projects that I just couldn't stop and wound up staying up really late at night...errr...stayed up really early morning?  to get done. 

You may have seen this in past posts.  This collection of frames a images hangs above the couch in our living room.  And seeing this photo is making me realize that they've gotten a little wonky over time.  I think a straightening up is in order....or should I leave them wonky and cute?

 This too is in our living room and is probably my favorite little vignette in the whole house. 

 Tramp art and an old owl on a skull illustration with cardboard faux bois frame hide an old phone jack in the kitchen.

 There's a bit of wall space in the master bath that I've been very slowly adding to.  I'd like to find a few more small landscape paintings to go with the first one...

 Some framed greeting cards in the bedroom.  I'm a big fan of framing greeting cards. 

And finally a trio of antique prints in the dining room.  I found the ship one on the right leaning against a trash can on garbage day back when we lived in Boston and other two I bought at Brimfield and have had for a while now. 

I hope you enjoyed some of our wall art!  I'll have to do another post on the rest...and I've got lots more ideas for new wall art in the new year!  Fun!  :)