Trellis Jealous

I’m addicted to trellis patterns right now. There are worse things I could be addicted to, like cigarettes, crack, American Idol. But right now, this is what i’m craving:

and a little bit of this . . .

and a whole lot of this . . .

Z Gallerie Labyrinth Pillow

However, after the back splash tiling project (which i will post about later) and painting every room in the house, plus millions of other little home improvement projects that I always have going on, I promised the man that I would go on a temporary spending freeze. The man is always getting me down.

I have noticed lately that the living room has been missing something. I finally figured it out the other day. We needed something on the wall above the couch. It was just a big gross patch of beige paint. Since we only bought our house in May, I have been wary about putting too many holes in the walls because i just want them to look smooth and unblemished forever. So there isn’t much hanging out on the walls. We definitely needed some kind of accent piece though, so I set out to look for something that would go great on the wall. Something bold, colorful, possibly geometric . . . TRELLIS!

(Edit: Do you ever have moments when you realize that your parents were right? I hate that feeling. My mom used to forbid us from putting holes in our walls. It is pretty difficult to hang 1000 TigerBeat centerfolds of Leonardo Dicaprio, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Andrew Keegan’s flowing locks when you can’t put thumbtacks in the wall. Totally know where you were coming from, Mom. Thank God for Scotch tape.)

This would be a great way to introduce some trellis love into the living room. My go-to quick art solution is to cover an art canvas with some beautiful fabric. However, the selection at Joann fabrics was seriously lacking and I didn’t want to wait the few days for shipping if I bought fabric online. Because I am impatient. Ridiculously impatient. When I get it in my head that I want to do something, it can’t wait one more second.

Soooo I headed over to Michael’s to look at their art canvas selection. I wanted something pretty big, but a giant canvas would have put me back 4o bones or more. Next stop, IKEA, and my favorite room in the world . . .

IKEAfans.com

The AS-IS room! I check this place on a weekly basis because the deals are great and most of the merchandise is salvageable. The IKEA gods must have been smiling down on me that day. Right there in the back of the room was this:

IKEA Ribba frame

The plastic inside the frame was slightly warped so I scored this giant frame for under $10. I took it home and stretched some canvas over the frame, used a staple gun to hold it in place, and my own art canvas on the cheap. Now here’s where it gets a little dicey. I know that you need to prime a canvas before you paint it. However I didn’t have any art canvas primer and I really wanted to use what I had on hand. I slapped a thin coat of latex interior wall primer on the thing. Don’t be mad at me. Oh wait it gets worse. Then I painted the pattern on with interior latex paint, so that it would precisely match the lower half of the wall. And guess what, haters? It worked brilliantly! Here are some pictures of the progress:

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I love large-scale prints and I never would have found a fabric that would have been that large. It will stay until I move on to a new obsession. And as I’m sitting here staring at the picture, I decided I need to make some pillow covers for the two small tan pillows. Way too much tan going on there. It never ends, does it?