The instawall

When I saw the pin on Pinterest, I immediately knew that THIS would be perfect for our large, empty living room wall. I didn't hang anything on it for a long time because I wanted a statement piece- something big, and not multiple pieces. I showed Tyler and his words were: "Do it! I love it! Go!" so that was nice encouragement. It's not often that Pinterest gets such enthusiasm from him! 

So I followed the tutorial... mostly. I printed my pictures at Walgreens because they were on sale for 9 cents per 4x6. All 90-ish pictures cost just over $8! Not bad. I did have to cut them down to 4x4 by myself but it was worth it at that cost. I used an old sheet from my college days, and bought a 4x8' piece of drywall at Home Depot for $8. They cut it down to 6.5x2.5' for me. The tutorial says 7x3 but that just felt a bit too big. I was so excited!

I played around with a few different sizes with paper.

Stapling the sheet to the board. Thanks to Sharon for lending me her staple gun!

Arranging pics

I put coins over each picture when they were in the right place

 Do you know how heavy drywall is? It's pretty heavy. I just couldn't figure out how to hang it without big holes (which equal a big commitment, and what if I didn't like it??), so I was stumped. I slept on it, and Tyler came up with the winning idea in the morning. Styrofoam! So I went back to Home Depot and found a 4x8' styrofoam insulation board. PERFECT. It was more expensive ($12), but so worth it to me. I took the pictures and sheet off the drywall and transferred it over to the styrofoam.

Coming home with the styrofoam on top of our heads. Luckily styrofoam is light!

Arranging pics- again. Much easier the second time because I knew my dimensions already.

 When it came to pinning the pictures in, I made another change from the tutorial. I loved the idea of straight pins because that makes them so changeable, but all the straight pins I found were over an inch long, and the styrofoam is only 1/2 inch thick! I didn't want them sticking out. So I found shorter pins (3/4") at Hobby Lobby- called sequin pins, in the wearable art section. They were also cheaper than straight pins- win win! So I stuck them in at an angle and they totally disappeared.

Thanks to its light weight, I just nailed three brackets on the back of the styrofoam and three nails in the wall to hang it. SO EASY. I love it!!

Millie loves it too. I finished and hung it while she was napping, so when she woke up, she ran right over and started jabbering about the pictures. "Mama! Dada! Gigi! Wawa! Cookie!" and all the other things she saw. She's been spending lots of time on that couch, pointing and talking.

We love the board! I'm excited to change out pictures as we take more (not gonna lie, most of these are within the last couple months. We take a lot of pictures). Sometimes when I hang something up, I spend a lot of time looking at it because it's new and feels a little weird and I'm not 100% at first. With this, it just feels like it fits! So I look at it, but not because it's odd- because I enjoy it! Anyway, that's the story of our instawall. The end.