I am always looking for unique art projects and interesting pieces because I don’t want to just have random things hanging on my walls – I want my home to be a reflection of who lives here, to be meaningful in some way, to remind us of a place we love, to stir an emotion or to simply strike our fancy in some big way. While I still love gallery walls, sometimes a wall is just calling out for one large statement piece of art in a room like this beauty from Elle Decor. I have made fairly large art pieces before like the DIY mounted nautical map and block poster art for Peter’s room. Now I am working on a piece for my One Room Challenge family room project. For this room I wanted something really big and different that wouldn’t kill the budget.
A couple years ago I saw such a clever idea for creating large scale art and have been dying to do it ever since – the DIY Octopus Art by House of Jade Interiors (formerly 6th Street Design School) that used an Urban Outfitters shower curtain, stretched onto a wooden frame. What makes this idea so fabulous is that thanks to this magical little thing called the internet, you can find literally tens of thousands of pictures – abstract art, typography, drawings, maps, photographs – printed in a large scale on fabric at an affordable price. I love the idea of using fabric for large scale art because it is easy to manipulate. It doesn’t have to be mounted onto a substrate like a large paper print or photograph, and it’s hard to ruin.
Most of the artsy shower curtains I found are made of polyester fabric (the Urban Outfitters cotton shower curtains being the exception in this roundup). The polyester concerned me because I wouldn’t want the fabric to have a sheen to it or look cheap when hanging smack dab in the middle of my house. This weekend I checked out shower curtains at Bed, Bath & Beyond that are made of polyester, and unless you touch the fabric, you really can’t tell what the material is from a foot or two away, so as far as polyester fabric for this application I think it would be fine.
I came across so many cool and interesting designs to use for a project like this, I thought I’d share them with you! Here are a few that caught my eye.
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From a sophisticated living room or library, to a casual family room, kid’s room, master bedroom, playroom, basement rec room, or long hallway wall, imagine these humble shower curtains and tapestries as huge pieces of art!
21 (this is the one used by House of Jade, love it!!) | 22
One more fun idea – take your own photo and have it made into custom printed shower curtain to use for oversized art!!! (this was the cheapest source I could find at $64.99) I looked into having a photo blow up and printed via Spoonflower but I couldn’t figure out how to make the image large. I’m venturing a guess that you’d need a high resolution photo to blow up. It would be such a fun way to personalize this project!!
Wish me luck as I try to nail down a design to use for my ORC. I’ll be back on Thursday with an update on finishing up The Last 20%!
