I have this huge blank wall in my rental home that has been left empty for 2 years. I never thought we’d be here this long and I didn’t want to spend any money fixing the place up if we were just going to have to pack it back up/throw it away. I’m not really the decorating type to begin with anyway. I have this girlfriend who is in the same boat. A couple of months ago, she decided that enough was enough and she was going to decorate. I’ll admit, it made me feel like I wasn’t trying at all. So… I whipped up this amazing large art piece and whalla! Cheap living room art IS possible. Honestly, I’m not a good photographer and the pictures don’t do it justice at all. It’s about 5 feet by 4 feet and matches really well with my DIY pillows. The picture below should give you some scale. I adjusted the bow and position of the stripes after I took this so it’s not perfect. Next, I’m going to put up some photos to the left and I think I’ll be all set for decorating for the rest of the year.
You will need:
- Foam Insulation Board $15
- Fabric $5 (I got mine clearance at Walmart)
- Straight Pins $3
First cut out your foam board. I would know what measurements you want beforehand and have the guys at Home Depot cut it for you so it will be square. Mine is obviously not square.
Cut out your fabric 1-2 inches bigger than your board so you can fold it around the back.
Pin your fabric to the back. For my stripes, I literally wrapped them around and tied a knot in the back. No pinning necessary. For the flower, I just tied a bow in the front and used my pins strategically to make it look like the picture. I used about 4 so not really a lot of fuss over it. You can see in the couch picture what it looked like before I pinned it.
The other great thing about this is it’s light. I just tapped a few finishing nails into the wall and stuck/pressed the board right onto them. If you don’t like the placement, it’s easy to pull it off and re-position. I love art that is easy to hang.
You can go crazy with the fabric. Mine is pretty boring. I was even thinking, if you are an artist, you could paint whatever you want on the fabric. (My sister wants hers to have peacocks) The awesome thing about this project is that you can make it your own style pretty easily. My $5 fabric happened to be a tad bit too bright to match my living room so I just threw it in the bathtub with hot water and 2 cups of bleach for 15 minutes and it came out perfectly.
It sounds so hassle free when I put it like that. Really what happened was, I bleached the first batch so much it turned purple and I barely had enough to bleach a second batch. My fabric pieces ended up being a tad bit too small so rather than buy more fabric, I got them wet and stretched them out. I then had to super stretch and pin them on to get them to wrap nicely around. It was a pain. Make sure you don’t cut yours too small.
Good luck. I’d love to see your rendition!