DECORATING WITH PHOTOS

Posted by Justin Haich on May 30, 2009

You don't have to spend big bucks buying artwork for your home. Your photos are a perfect alternative that's personal, affordable and versatile. Here are a few ideas for decorating your space with photos:

Create a family photo wall. Print your favourite family shots, frame them, and arrange them all on one wall. For a cohesive look, keep frames in one colour family (all black, or all silver), but feel free to mix up textures, thicknesses and shapes for visual interest. This approach works really well on a large living room wall, in a hall or a stairway.

Make a travel wall. This is the same ideas as the family wall, but with vacation photos. Focus on images from a single trip, or assemble all your best travel shots in one place.

Go big with your favourite shots. Blow up the prints you really love to 8x10, 11x14, or even a dramatic 24x30. Pick up some inexpensive frames, and create a photo gallery on your walls. Or mount your poster-size prints on foamcore and lean them up against a free wall for an arty gallery feel.

Collage it. Use the easy kwikpix.ca collage tool to create a beautiful poster for your child's room – compile photos of friends, sports teams, school events, etc., to create personalized art they'll love.

Be abstract. Don't limit yourself to shots of smiling people. Create art by thinking like an artist. Take a closeup photo of a crumpled leaf. Shoot the blurred lights of moving cars in a night time streetscape. Focus on beautiful fabrics, stacks of scarves at a market, petals on a flower, scattered pencils. Be creative. You might be surprised at what you can come up with.

Play with photo software. Make your photo look like a watercolour or a pencil drawing with filters. Create a faux Polaroid. Pull in crazy colours to create an Andy Warhol style photo. Experiment. Have fun. Then print your experiments and hang them up in your home.

Pick unusual frames. Why stick with storebought frames? Add visual interest to your décor by using found objects instead. Old window frames can be beautiful – just put a pic on each pane of glass. Mirrors work well too; arrange photos onto the glass with photo tape, leaving some mirror showing through for a light-filled collage. Or string a clothesline along one wall, and affix photos with clothespins. The ideas are endless.

Make a family “tree.” Paint a tree on a wall in your home, and hang photos of the people in your family on the branches.

Really, you can't go wrong when you surround yourself with images you love. Looking at them every day will make you happy. And if you get tired of a picture, just switch it up with something else. It's easy – and remarkably affordable.

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