Getting Stuff Done... Slowly

I've been trying to figure out what to do with the wallpaper remnants from our living room for a year now. Decent quality wallpaper is stupid expensive and seeing those sad little half rolls laying around made me think of wasted dollar, dollar bills (5 dollar bills to be exact, we have no dollar bills in Canada).
It took me a while to initially pick out that wallpaper too. I wanted a wallpaper I was going to love for years, one that didn't scream 2011... Getting stuff done goes at a slow pace in this household. As we probably won't change that wallpaper for a couple decades, I had to make a wise choice. I loved the purple version but I knew I would get sick of it eventually and so I settled for black and white (available here). But 'settling' turned into true love (warning; not often this way!!!) and I am happy everyday with the wallpaper choice. So happy, I wanted to use those remnants elsewhere as well.

The smallest wall in our house is a little sliver of wall between our bedroom and the walk-in closet. Yes, the walk in closet that was already there when we moved in! A few weekends ago I convinced Matt to hang some of the leftover wallpaper on that wall. He tried to get out of it by saying that the remnants were too short and there would be an awkward seam near the bottom. He said I should just pick a new wallpaper. But I'm on this 'let's try and be smart with our money' kick and I assured him I could fix the seam with my magic markers. Half an hour and one mismatched wallpaper seam later, Matt was finished papering the wall. Two hours and two glasses of wine later, I had filled in the seam to match and coloured in select blossoms.

I used Prismacolor markers to colour on the wallpaper. I bought some of these markers for my art classes in university and some more for my landscape design courses a few years later. They are probably my favourite medium to work with. You can get colours that have low opacity, so you start with sheer colours and layer to add dimensions. They are a bit like watercolour but less messy and if you work fast and on a waxed surface, you can move the pigment around easily. In a rare moment of pre-planning, I even practised my marker technique on a scrap of wallpaper first...

All that to say, I love how it turned out. The coloured in blossoms give the wallpaper a more formal look than the original version hanging in the living room. We really need to work on getting our bedroom into shape but if you put your blinders on and ignore the mess to the left of the wall and on the other side of the closet (conveniently cropped out of the photo), things looks pretty good. Best of all? It was a free project, using materials I already had lying around the house. And free is a beautiful thing compared to the cost of that bench; too much money and too many tears went into to re-upholstering it this spring...