enJOY it by Elise Blaha Cripe

my favorite photo into abstract portrait art.

I recently commissioned Elizabeth Chapman to paint a picture for me in her abstract portrait style. I have become such a fan of her work through Elsie & Emma (talk about a talented family!) and was so thrilled that she was willing to take on this project.

This photo of Ellerie and me works perfectly in the abstract style because it's a profile shot. The relationship is the important part, not the faces. I LOVE how it turned out.

I added it to the gallery wall over our TV (by far the most stared at wall in our house) though I know it will hang in various rooms in various states in various countries as our family grows and moves over the next few decades. Such a special heirloom.

Thank you, Elizabeth!

ps. this makes two family paintings that I'll be hanging on to forever.

christmas paper & photo collage.

I saw this grid frame* on Pinterest and immediately a light bulb flashed. This is the ideal frame for a photo progression collage. You know the ones - one frame, multiple holes, photos from repeating years to show growth and change. My parents have one with photos of all the houses that we have lived in. They also have one with my brother and me in our Halloween costumes and us on Santa's lap. The frames get brought out every year with the holiday decorations and were always my favorite growing up.

I was so thrilled to find my own version in such a clean and simple style. I plan on filling it with Christmas photos each year starting this year. The original plan was to put photos from our first three years of marriage in but after some digging (in the blog archives), I found that my holiday photo taking skills have seriously lacked the past few years. (I blame Paul being deployed for one Christmas and me not doing Project Life the year before that.) Instead of framing some not great photos or having to leave 2011 blank, I'm just going to start with the Ellerie years and call it good.

To fill the empty slots in the meantime, I choose favorite Christmas papers - some are old from Hambly and American Crafts, others are from this year's Studio Calico December Daily kit*. I cut my papers down to 4x4 and added just a few embellishments. It's going to be fun to add photos each year, but I actually love how this looks as just a paper collage too.

It's crazy to think about 16 years from now when this frame is full of photos and not patterned papers. So much can and will change. I get sentimental in advance just thinking about it. I'll pull out that last paper, stick in a photo and shake my head over how fast time flew while similtaneously trying to pour myself a glass of wine and squeezing my teenager(s) to pieces.

*links to the frame & kits are affiliate links, which means if you purchase through them I recieve a small comission.

growing the gallery wall around the TV.

Since we built the new media stand, I've been very slowly adding to the art around the TV. This wall is the one I look at most frequently (that's sad, but true) so it's been considered probably more than any other space in the house.

Instead of just filling it in all in one day, I've added a little bit here and a little bit there over the past few months. Each time something new goes up, it takes me awhile to decide if I really like it. Too often, I'll pause whatever Paul and I are watching, get the hammer and shuffle things around. (I am a real joy to watch TV with.)

I have it at a point now where I am pretty pleased, though I am not sure if that Love Bird print or the metal C is quite right for the space. They are currently keeping the balance though, so for now they stay.

The art in the square frame is by Creative Thursday and it's my newest purchase. I'm a fan of how this square works with the big California print.

The photo of the beach was taken by Paul last spring in Spain. He didn't think anything of it, but I loved it - probably because it reminds me of the gorgeous photography of Christian Chaize. (We have one of his prints hanging in the hall.)

It's not finished, I am not sure it will ever be finished, but it's starting to feel "full."

Sources : Creative Thursday sunset print, Urban Outfitters metal C (similar here), Love Bird framed card (purchased right before Paul and I moved in together..SIX years ago), personal photograph, Tara Whitney photo of Paul and Ellerie, DeadBuryDead print, DIY silhouette wall hangings, DIY yes art, Orange & Park California print, pinwheel painting, Paris print, ampersand string art, siiso print. frames by ikea, target & pottery barn.

on our walls / framing photos.

To wrap up this week, I wanted to talk a bit about framing (family) photos and hanging them on the walls. A few years ago, I was all about plastering the house with photos of the two of us. I've pulled up a little bit since then and have worked to incorporate a lot more "art" into our space.

But I still love a good framed photo and decided to create a cluster of them on the wall in front of the garage entrance to our house.

We have been super blessed over the past few years to have really awesome photos taken by really great photographers (The Goodness & Driver Photo). I am so thankful for the photos we have from them and oodles of them have made it into our family albums (here, here & here).

I have also chosen to frame a few, but tend to favor the "less traditional" of the shots. For example, the only wedding photo that we currently have on our walls is a small 5x7 of our shoes (and flowers).

We have a similar shoe shot from our engagement photos framed on the mantle.

And a favorite from the photos we took in April.

Other than that though, I end up framing a lot of imperfect or random photos. Some are low quality - the one above was taken with an underwater disposable camera and others were taken with my phone or even computer camera.

A photo that makes me laugh is likely to make the wall. I've talked about the one above many times before; it was taken in a photobooth set up at our friends' wedding. I didn't see it at the wedding and months later, for a split second, I thought I had taken a photo with Russel Brand. It had to go on the wall (and it had to be our 2011 Christmas card). I wanted something big and fun (and cheap) so I had it blown up at Office Depot for under $4. It's printed on copy paper but because it's just black and white, the quality looks decent. That frame & mat was purchased at Ikea.

Photobooth strips are likely to make the wall. Something magic happens in photobooths and I am not quite sure what it is? Maybe it's the light that seems to blow out any skin imperfections? Or maybe it's just the small cramped space? Or maybe it's just the flurry of activity that comes with trying for four "great" shots? Either way - the results are usually good. I have two strips (both from the Ace Hotel about a year apart) and one collage of them (from a wedding we attended in fall 2010) on our walls.

One of my favorite framed photos is from the first morning of our honeymoon. We were at breakfast and I set the timer on my small point and shoot. It captured us eating (so the photo rests on the counter in our kitchen) but it also captured our new wedding rings. We were in the most picturesque honeymoon site and somehow this random photo of breakfast is still one of my favorites from the trip.

I love framed photos that show the passing of time. I found the two on the left (from 2009 & 2007) while sorting through old photos. When I went to buy a frame to put them next to each other, I could only find frames with three 4x6 holes. So back at home, I found another photo from last spring and ta-da... three similar photos, five years apart.

Most of our framed photos are super normal sizes - 4x4, 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 or 11x14 - so they are very easy to frame. When I know I want to create a cluster of different photos, I tend to stick with frames that are all the same color (usually black). It's unifying without being limiting. (Everywhere sells black frames.) I have read many online tutorials about hanging gallery walls. Most recommend creating templates of each frame out of newspaper and playing around with them on the wall. I totally dig that idea and would go for it if I was worried about spacing, but usually, I just start hammering and adjust as needed.

When I have something that is a non-traditional size, like a photobooth strip that I want to frame, I buy heavy white paper (at an art or craft store), cut it to the size of the frame and mount the photo on the front and center with double stick tape. A large white mat in a black frame makes even small photos stand out and sets them apart as something special.

Recently, I have started to write (in pencil) the dates and locations on the white mats of the frames. This is partly for me, so I remember, but also for anyone who looks at our walls. It's funny - one of my favorite things to do at people's houses is look at their family photos. I think it's fascinating to see what people decide to frame.

on our walls / creating graphic & simple art.

Almost all of the art I have created for our current townhouse & past apartments has been of the simple and graphic variety. I have talked about this before, but while I love "abstract" art, all of my attempts to make something awesome and abstract have revealed it's so much harder than it looks. When I need to create something big for our space, I love playing with repeating shapes to get something fun and bold that is relatively easy to "get right."

I have tried a few different methods for simple graphic paintings. In the above painting (which I ended up recovering because the color wasn't quite right) I just used my finger to dab different colors of paint on a yellow canvas. Here's a full tutorial. A different, but similar effect could be created by "stamping" with a cotton ball, sponge or cork soaked in paint.

Earlier this summer, I shared a circle painting that was completed in a similar method to the finger painting. Again, I used repeating shapes, a limited color palette and many layers to fill a space.

Triangles are another graphic shape I use over and over. By joining large triangles I created a pinwheel piece. (Tutorial here.) For this one, I used painters tape to get clean lines. In a "non-traditional" move for me, I used many different colors for this pinwheel. I could totally see something like this on a much larger scale with metiallic spray paint.

To turn a simple clay pot into something that makes a statement, I painted black and white triangles freehand. The shapes are far from perfect here, but because it's only two colors is not distracting.

Sometimes, I play with graphic art on a much smaller scale because it's so much easier to experiment before jumping into a large (and more expensive) project. The triangle painting above is from a set I made last year. This was a fun brush control challenge to get a bit better at freehand creating straight lines. Filling in these small spaces was a fun exercise and I love that a small painting brings color (and breaks up all the books) on our room divider bookshelf.

One of my favorite graphic pieces is super simple. I used copper leafing to recover an old canvas that didn't really work in our space any more. I like that the leafing process gives it a bit more texture than if it was just painted and that because it's just one color makes it makes a great backdrop to whatever I put in front of it on our mantle.

My last graphic art method is to just paint (or collage or draw or color) a simple shape, icon or symbol. In our kitchen, I needed something to help fill the big mirrored wall and decided to paint over an existing canvas with white paint and then add a black wine bottle right on top. I used a pencil first to give me an idea of the shape I was going for. If freehand isn't your favorite method, it would be easy to cut a template out of newspaper for something like this (or a symbol, letter or word). To hang art in front of a mirror, I stapled white ribbon to the back of the canvas and ran it up to the celing where I used one more staple to hold the ribbon into the plaster ceiling.

One of the reasons I think I am drawn to such simple art is that these projects are graphic, but quick and inexpensive. There is no emotional tie in that means years from now I'll have a hard time throwing out or painting over these projects. We are looking at lots of moves over the next decade and many changes. I like the idea that our art can and will change with us.