Category Archives: D.I. Why?

by | 12 September 2011 · 5:02 pm

How To Make Lame Art Cool

Dear DIY Diary,

I bought an awesome, yet stupid, painting at a thrift store recently and I was looking for a way to make it more challenging. I knew I wanted to add text but didn’t really want to invest the time in painting it so I decided to use vinyl lettering.

Here is what the painting looked like sans text:

Here are the letters I bought from Koonz Hardware in West Hollywood. If you live anywhere near Los Angeles and you love old timey hardware stores, you have to check out Koonz. It’s totally awesome.

And here’s the text I added, which changed the painting from cheesy coastal tourist town art to something more intriguing.

Anyway, feel free to steal this idea. Buy a dumb painting for $20, get some stickers, and write something wacky on it. It’s a great conversation starter (which is why I hung mine in the dining room).

Glamour.

Love,
Orlando

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by | 21 June 2011 · 5:13 am

D.I. Why??? How To Make Your Bulletin Boards Less Bulletin Boardy

Dear Bulletin Boards,

I really like you, but I hate the way that corkboard looks. Thus, I like to cover my bulletin boards with newspaper, paint, or anything to distract from the cork. When a bulletin board is blank, it’s like a scary canvas I don’t know how to get started on. When there is already some paper, paint, or anything collaged over the cork, I feel more free to tack up whatever I like, which is normally postcards from art openings and $100 bills. Here is what I did to make my bulletin boards prettier:

This was the bulletin board before I did anything to it, just sitting there bare, taunting me.

So I smothered glue all over it, and then covered it with newspaper.

The other boards I covered with a piece of artist-designed wrapping paper (that I got from a gallery in Chelsea) and with grey paint. If you are going to group bulletin boards, it’s probably best to keep them in the same color palette.

I still have a lot of work to do filling my boards with fun postcards and other ephemera, but I ran out of push pins. If real bulletin boards aren’t your thing, you can always use Pinterest, which is a similar way to catalogue your inspiration but lacks some of the fun tactile qualities of real bulletin boards. Either way, if it isn’t pretty I’m not going to look at it, so get out there and make your bulletin boards gorgeous!

Love,
Orlando

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