Thursday, April 5, 2012

Goodwill Challenge: Wallpaper

This week, (as mentioned here), I challenged myself to find some creative and useful ideas for some thrift store wallpaper that I had on hand.

With the striped paper, I decided to do something that at first, seemed a little difficult. I gathered my supplies - large canvas (see other projects I have made with these canvases here), scissors, homemade Modge Podge (see the recipe here), and wallpaper.

Since chevron is all the rage right now, I decided that these stripes would be the perfect candidates for a creative chevron project. I folded the paper in a 45 degree angle.  You will need to do some strips folded up and some down. Otherwise, all your stripes will be going the same direction instead of forming right angles. I know this may seem like muddled instructions, but once you start cutting and making the stripes into chevron patterns, you'll understand what I mean.


Using my homemade Modge Podge, I began gluing the paper strips down to my canvas.

It was quite the puzzle to try to match everything up perfectly.


In the middle of my canvases, a few of my stripes went a little wonky. But since I knew that I would be covering the center of the canvas with something else, I didn't let it stress me out.



I had purchased a map from Amazon about a year ago, hoping to use it to creatively track our travels. I simply Modge Podged the map to the center of the canvas and let it dry. 


I was very pleased with my finished product. Stay tuned to see how we track our travels on this map.

I also used some wallpaper in some other ways this week. Since it was a "challenge" I decided that one project wasn't good enough. I had purchased these adorable little travel coffee mugs from the dollar tree.  They were specifically for children to color the inside label. I simply replaced the label with some pretty wallpaper.


I also used some of the paper to wrap a birthday present.


For $1 per roll, this is definitely cheaper than regular wrapping paper.


I had another friend (who actually had the same paper that is picture above) share with me how she's used her wallpaper.


She filled a photo frame with it, using the frame to display some wedding mementos.  The wallpaper jazzed up some college storage drawers, hiding the drawer's contents. And it looks beautiful to fills some photo coasters with little pieces of the wallpaper.

My friend, Lydia, also "participated." I approved her amended supply item. She still created something awesome out of some supplies that she had on hand. Check out her jewelry storage idea using burlap. It's creative and adorable!

Did any of you find a creative way to use some wallpaper? If so, feel free to comment with a link to your project!

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