One More Thing for the Wall

By now you are probably all sick of reading about my gallery wall, but I did have one more project in the works that I decided to finish after posting about the wall. It is now finished and hung with all the others.

It all started, like so many things, with Pintrest. I saw this and completely fell in love.

Source: green-wedding.net via Heather on Pinterest

It's black, it's shiny, it's contemporary, and it sparkles. Basically, it's everything that I love in decor.

I had a necklace rack that I made about fifteen years ago, with my mom's help, that I wanted to repurpose as wall art. I had incorporated it in the original gallery wall layout, but didn't know how I wanted to decorate it. After seeing this centerpiece, I decided to do an interpretation of it on my old necklace rack.

I started by purchasing a length of crystal garland, some large crystal drops, jewelry chain, and a package of jumprings.

I attached the large drops to sections of the crystal garland and chain (this will make a lot more sense in pictures below), and I spray painted the necklace rack with black gloss spray paint left over from the canvas piece I did a couple of weeks ago. Once the paint was dry, I attached the lengths of crystal with jumprings.

It was looking mighty fine at this point, but was still a bit plain. I decided to try something that I had been pondering and Google searched about. I decided to try using contact paper to add some text to the piece. Ideally I would have used vinyl, but I'm working with what I got.

After settling on a font and size, I printed the word "Family" and taped it to my self-healing mat on top of a piece of white contact paper (also known as adhesive shelf liner). Then I got to work with my craft knife. (Have I mentioned that I want a Silhouette?)

After cutting out each letter, I tried a tip I had read about in blog land--using drywall tape in lieu of transfer tape. I cut a length of drywall tape and placed it over my whole cut piece, then carefully removed the pieces I didn't want (the outside pieces, if you will) so that the letters will still lined up straight. I flipped the whole thing over and removed the backing to expose the sticky side of the contact paper.

I stuck the whole thing on my painted former-necklace rack and thoroughly rubbed the whole thing to make sure it was good and stuck. Then carefully peeled back the drywall tape, making sure that I didn't pull up any contact paper with it, rubbed the letters again for good measure, and stepped back to admire my work.

I think it actually turned out very well. You can't even tell it isn't vinyl from a distance.

And with it hung on the wall as it is, no one is likely to take a close look at it; just stand there and admire it. Oh, am I the only one who does that?

Anyone have some brilliant (and cheaper) alternatives they would like to share? Any new crafts that you sit back and lovingly admire? Have you been inspired lately to reinterpret something you have seen and love to fit your needs?

PS. This project was updated on 1/13/2012 at Updates to "The Wall" with Cameo.