Feb 4

Feb 4 Photo wallpaper

Aaah... doesn't mister Kermit look handsome in his own private forest? This little muppet loves having his picture taken so much he even thought himself how to pose and to do blue steel :)

Anyway back to the wall, doesn't it look amazing? If you follow the blog you would have seen my Annie Sloan wall paint video (if you missed it click here) where I gave three of my living room walls a lovely beige/olive colour. You would have spotted that I left one wall bare, this wasn't a lazy style choice but I was waiting for my photo wallpaper to arrive.

I love photo wallpaper ever since I spotted a picture in an old VT wonen magazine of a black&white vintage family photo blown up to cover a whole wall. The oversized image gave such a style impact to that room that I thought I want that! Unfortunately I never came round doing that in my old rental but when designing the living room of my new place I knew right away I wanted a big photo on one of the walls. But what image? It had to fit in with the botanical theme of the room and it had to be something that had impact but wasn't to in your face. I also wanted something I wasn't going to be bored of after a year so why not a classic piece of art?

There's an amazing art museum in Amsterdam called the Rijksmuseum and what is even more amazing is that they have an online catalogue of 200.000 masterpieces on their Rijksstudio website that you can browse, download and print to use in your home. Always fancied a Vermeer on your walls? You can by downloading an image from their website! Have a look at theexamples they give on how you could use the art works, I especially love the car. The Rijksstudio also has their own print service and you can have your favourite art work printed as a poster,on a canvas or on alluminum. Isn't this an amazing service? I wish more museums were this forward thinking in getting art works into peoples homes. The image I choose is a 1795 painting from Hendrik Voogd and is called Italiaans landschap met pijnbomen (Italian landscape with pine trees) It is a photo/scan of the painting and you can see all the details and the crackles in the paint real well.

The wallpaper has been printed by Photowall a Swedish company with an amazing wallpaper collection. They not only have very on trend designers work for them creating original wallpapers and murals they can also print any image you want on to wallpaper. You simply upload your high res image and send Photowall the dimensions of your wall and a few days later you have your made to measure wallpaper in your letterbox. If you want to make a few adjustment to your image no problem, the people at Photowall can help you edit and photoshop your image. I had my art work flipped as for the flow of the room it was nicer to have the big tree close to the door. There are two paper types you can choose from, I opted for the premium paper as it doesn't reflect my studio lights making it easier to photograph.

My wallpaper came in nine sections, each 45cm wide, and is very easy to hang with the wallpaper paste that comes with your order. As you will see in the video below I started by drawing a straight line 45cm from the corner of the left wall (you wallpaper from left to right) to make sure the first panel was 100% straight. In an old house like mine you can't trust the ceiling lines and having a straight line as a starting point makes for very easy wallpapering. It took me roughly two hours to do my wall as I was working super precise as I didn't want any visible paper lines in between the panels that will annoy me for years to come. And I think it worked, can you see where the panels are joining in the image above?

Have a look at my video to see how I created this amazing wall of art

What would you print on your wallpaper? An art work like I did? An image you took yourself? A shot of your favourite pet? Or maybe the architectural plans of your home, wouldn't that be great for a study?

If you watched the video to the end you would have seen my Kermit outtakes, you now know the reason Kermit is in almost all the shots. He just didn't want to leave me alone when I was trying to film the end result so I made him model ;)

Next week I'm back with a very excited video, the first episode in my Meet de maker series in which I interview crafters and makers that inspire me. And the first episode is all about craft author Clare Youngs.

See you next week xx Hester

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