Pepper Design Blog

New Kitchen: Custom Calendar Art

In the week of blogiversary giveaways, I posted that recently I had turned my favorite calendar into new wall art for the kitchen.

Previously, the gap on the wall looked like this:

Sorely in need of something large and in charge to both soften the room and fill up blank space.

I’m pretty picky about art, especially something so prominently placed that’s going to be seen day in and day out, so I had a hard time (a really, really hard time) coming up with a solution for the space. I had one large Ikea square frame in my little frame collection and realized that this area of the kitchen might just be the place for it. After testing out on the wall I determined that two stacked would be better and picked up one more. Progress was made! Now I needed to find art.

When I came across this calendar on the Rifle website by chance, I fell in love with the style of the illustrations! There were several months in the calendar that I thought would especially work well and in one of those crazy moments where the stars collide and you make up your mind on the spot, I bought the calendar online.

While I waited for the calendar to arrive I set out to find mattes for the frames since I knew that the calendar pages were 11×11″ and not my 22″ frame size. I usually err on the side of white but the linen mattes from the office wall collage were some of my favorites, and a similarly textured matte would look great in the kitchen against the natural woods and jute rugs. After much price comparison I went with Michaels where they cut the mattes for me for ~$20 each (I usually buy my all white mattes on eBay where they can be custom cut and are the cheapest).

But then the calendar arrived and oh no! Not only were the beautiful illustrations visible in the frame but the title of each month was too:

Why hadn’t I thought about that? Not what I was hoping for.

After a little creative brainstorming I ended up cutting apart other pages of the calendar with similar foliage and tried to camouflage the lettering by covering it up.

In tutorial form (because I am all about visuals), here goes:

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DIY Art with Creative Cover-Ups
mfra

Materials: frame, matte, art to frame, photocopy of art to frame OR similar art (for the purpose of camouflaging whatever it is you’re trying to hide), scissors, glue stick

Cut, position and glue!

Cut as closely as you can to your copied art (via photocopying, scanning and printing, or purchasing a duplicate of the same piece) and hide your lettering (or whatever it is you’re hoping to make go away).

And here they are hanging!

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Love the look of the linen matte (which has a slight texture) against the illustrations and love the dark frames that compliment our oil rubbed bronze kitchen faucet and pendants.

It’s all about bringing in different elements in different places. The dark wood barstools compliment the dark wood range hood, the lighter walnut cabinets are similar to the doors, the dark slate tiles have the same leathery grey as the counter tops and now the oil rubbed bronze is evident in both the faucet, pendants, cabinet pulls and art.

The left side of those frames is a window under construction (boarded up) waiting to be turned into the top of a built-in bar (potentially in many many years ). But as of now, the new art compliments the room really well! And I’m glad I found a fix for art that I really do love.

All kitchen makeover posts can be found right here.

Kitchen Update: A Sticky Situation + A Neat Feature

Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend! We spent Monday relaxing, having lunch with friends and visiting the park. Such a great way to spend the day off!

Here’s a quick fix that I finished up yesterday too – a solution to our slippery slidey kitchen cushions that may just swoop out from right under you when you sit down.

You may have noticed when we added the cushions (from this great fabric) that I decided not to add ties for around the barstool backs.

I don’t really love the look of ties (though they are so practical) and I wanted to keep the lines modern.

But… those darn seats slide up and off all the time. I didn’t think I would mind so much, but it’s kind of annoying.

So when I came across these picture frame velcro fasteners at a Joann’s, I thought I’d give it a whirl. These are built for securely fastening objects like frames to walls, and I figured if they’re strong enough to hold a picture, they should be strong enough to hold cushions on a chair (even with the weight of a person sliding forward or back).

Plus, when you’re ready to remove them from the wood of the chair, a little soap and suds is supposed to take them right off.

The seat of the barstool reieved a fastener on the top and each side, then the sticky end came off and the cushion was applied directly to the top of the sticky velcro. I pressed down on each cushion-to-velcro piece for at least 30 seconds to ensure a very tight stick.

So far so good! This velcro is strong! I attempted the above with just two pieces for a cushion and that wasn’t as secure, four may be even better.

In other news, these cushions made it to the Quadrille gallery! You can imagine my excitement when the marketing director asked me if they could post an image of our kitchen in their gallery (along side my favorite magazines and designers):

Woohoo! Made my day.

Have a great Tuesday!

San Diego Magazine: June, The Good Eats Issue

Wow, I can’t believe that June is almost over! The latest issue of San Diego Magazine is all about food and delicious places to find it locally. Jump out to page 76 in the digital edition to check out my contributions this month.

I still can’t believe it’s nearing the middle of summer {sweet July} and that the weather is really crankin’ up the heat around here. Our summer vacation will be spent, in part, biking across Iowa with our family in an event called RAGBRAI. I’m not really a biker nor do I particularly enjoy humidity in late July, but the entire family (in-laws, my parents and all of the brothers) are game so we’re making a go of it. If you’ll be sipping fruity drinks on a beach somewhere I’m not sure I want to hear about it.

We’ve been training a bit so that I don’t flat pass out after 20 miles, but yesterday was the first day that it really felt like the summer heat wave had arrived. The weather has been just beautiful.

But back to the magazine. This month’s issue features chicken hideaways (we have some of those), best San Diego restaurants and a feature on a gorgeous, sustainably built La Jolla home that I had the chance to tour before writing an article about it (for the full article, here’s the digital edition).

The June issue was all about good eats and so I assembled a collage of favorite kitchen renovation finds for a variety of styles. The spread was supposed to run parallel to a great full page kitchen but an ad snuck its way in instead.

I’m loving those stools and the mix of runners – nevermind the great pendants (especially that Glabraith & Paul one) and the tile.

Back to RAGBRAI training I go! Hope you have a few exciting adventures planned this summer, too!