Up, up, up

I have a confession. I must confess that I have never bothered to decorate a staircase. Nope, never. They have, for years and years, remained plain, boring, dull...you get the idea. I have always considered them not so much a destination, rather, more of a passage way.

Times they are a changin'! Because our stairs are very open, I just can't bear to leave them...well...bare. I have Mr. Mel's thumbs up to put a photo collage up in our staircase.

Here's how I did it:

As usual, this project had to be done on the cheap so I went digging through all of our yet-to-be-unpacked boxes of photos and artwork. I grabbed any frames that tickled my fancy, keeping in mind that I wanted to be sure to use a variety of shapes and sizes of frames to add as much interest to the wall as I could. I emerged from the basement with a box full of goodies.

I decided that, along with frames, I would also hang letters that represented us and our family (namely, the first initials of me, Mr. Mel, and my 3 kitties Nicky, Butterball, and Jones. I also thought it might be cute to throw in a couple of frames that, instead of photos, contained quotes or verses.

I started by priming and painting all of the frames and wooden letters.  Lesson learned...you cannot spray paint photo mats without them looking messed up! As luck would have it, I had some wallpaper bought for another project, so I decided to cover the mats in it so I didn't have to replace them.

Next, I took some of the decals and adhered them to the glass in a few of the frames. I used leftover wallpaper as a background for these frames.

I wanted all of my photos to be in black and white so I went through the digital photos on my computer and off I went to the Walmart to get them printed out. Finally, I put the photos in their frames, and laid out my design on the floor. I found this helpful diagram online to give me a starting point.

The last step was to hang my design on the wall. This took more time than I thought, but I wanted to make sure I didn't put any unecessary holes in the wall. I used the back of wrapping paper to mark the layout for each grouping, tacked it up on the wall and put my nails right through the paper where I had marked it for each frame. Then I pulled off the paper and hung up my frames (hint hint...take a digi photo of the layout so you don't forget what goes where).

Here is the before of my staircase (must mention here what a pain in the butt it is to take photos of a staircase!):

And here it is now:

Here is the breakdown of costs for this project:

$0 for frames

$0 for spray primer (I already had a can from my a lamp project)

$9 for white spray paint

$0 for wallpaper (leftovers from my coffee table project - to be posted soon)

$10 for vinyl decals

$10 for wooden letters

$8 for photo developing

Total Cost = $ 37

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