the art wall (and mini tutorial)

It all started one year ago with inspiration from this blog. Then my parents had our walls painted for Christmas (we chose gray mare). Then I had this idea to buy a really ugly frame from a thrift store and paint it yellow! I'm not gonna lie, I was a little nervous it was going to look like a neutral baby nursery met an Easter decoration, but it looks way cooler than that! I chose to do metal instead of cork because the metal went better with our room, and it seemed to cost the same. Plus, who doesn't love some cute magnets?

So here you have it folks...our "office/front room" art wall.

(here is a view looking at the art wall and the front door for those of you who have been here and can envision our front room)
(and a close up of one of the static pieces of artwork, just because i am so happy with how it turned out!)

and a Mini Tutorial: How to make a magnetic frame.

spray paint all your frames. i chose "strawflower". My frames needed about three coats. And beware, you might paint your garage floor if you are painting in breezy conditions. So be sure to cover MOST of your garage floor.

gather materials: a big sheet of sheet metal (mine was $20 @ Home Depot), tin snips (thanks Reynolds!), work gloves, a ruler, sharpie and masking tape.

Measure, put on your gloves, Cut, and snip off any jagged edges.

put your metal in your frame and use the masking tape to hold it in place. Unless your frame has a nice back. Then just put the back on (at this point I was yelling at myself for throwing away the backs to my two smaller frames! duh!)

(then stand back and admire how awesome you are!) now your frame is ready to be hung on the wall and decorate with kids' artwork held up with cute magnets.

I would like to take a moment to publicly state how awesome my husband is. He spend the good part of an hour tonight helping me hang the art wall. He is awesome or the bomb.com

[I love him]