Insta-Art!

John and I love San Francisco.  Maybe it's due to the fact we honeymooned there a few years ago, but it is such an amazing city.  Plus, it's just a quick drive to wine country.  You certainly can't beat that.  We're working towards a San Francisco theme in our bedroom, with a huge IKEA-bought print of the Golden Gate Bridge and another much smaller photo of the bridge we bought last summer from Eastern Market.  Other than that, it's pretty barren.

A photo by Joe Shymanski - the same guy who did our Eastern Market kitchen photos.

To cure this, I had the idea to frame some illustrations from the book "This is San Francisco" by Miroslav Sasek.  I love his whimsical, colorful drawings and think they're definitely of framing quality.

I was inspired by the framed DaVinci sketches I saw in the blog Pure Style Home and wanted to incorporate a similar project in our house.  I just think it's a great DIY project that results in some inexpensive, original art and the best part is you can customize it exactly to your taste by displaying your favorite things.

Pure Style Home's foyer art.. and check out that awesome orange front door.

This project was made even less expensive for us thanks to John's mom, Beth, who so kindly ordered us two books so I could desecrate one and have a second copy to enjoy intact.  I first flipped though the pages and chose my four favorite illustrations, of course making sure there was nothing on the opposite side of the page I might want to frame.  After measuring those, we headed out to IKEA (of course) and picked up four RIBBA frames, followed by a trip to Michael's to get some paper to mount the pictures to (since they wouldn't fit exactly behind the mats and I didn't want to go to the expense of having them custom mounted) and some adhesive photo squares.  With four $9.99 frames and about $5 in paper and squares, I think less than $12 a piece is a great deal.

The RIBBA frames

The rest of my supplies.  Of course there's Franzia involved!

Once I had everything ready, I carefully ripped the pages out of the book.  Trust me, it wasn't easy to do, tearing up a book, but I felt since I was taking the pages out to celebrate the art, it was OK.  I then lined the page up in my paper cutter and trimmed down the page to cut out the illustration.

Trimming down the pages

All the illustrations ready for framing

I mounted each illustration to the paper, mounted the paper to the matting, and stuck them each in a frame... and that's it!  Easy peasy and I have four new pieces of art to hang in our bedroom!  Here are the finished pieces:

I chose this first drawing of Union Square because it reminded me of our last trip to San Francisco in 2009 when we stayed right in Union Square and happened upon a Taiwanese festival on a beautiful day and got to watch a children's choir performing.

A photo at the festival

This illustration reminded me of the same trip when John and I went walking through a park and coincidentally popped out along the water underneath the bridge.  It was a beautiful, quiet day and we had a great time taking photos down by the bridge.

Us down by the bridge.

This one reminds me of our honeymoon when we took one of those double-decker tour buses around the city and got to see Lombard Street - one of San Francisco's famously crooked streets.

Our photo of Lombard Street... the green patch at the top is the crooked spot.

Finally, the last one of the cable cars reminds me of our 2009 trip when we finally rode the city's famous cable cars.  Our hotel in Union Square faced the cable car line, so each morning we awoke to the sound of their bells clanging.  One chilly night we decided to take them for a ride, and it was so much fun to snuggle close and watch the city go by.

Us on the cable car.

*sigh*  What an amazing city.  We like to dream of one day moving to the West Coast.  Most likely not in the city itself since it's so expensive (how the heck did the Tanners on Full House afford their place??), but how amazing would that be?  Hanging out in the city, driving along the coast to wine country... ugh, how did we get stuck here in nasty ol' DC?  Anyways, that's my art project for the day!  It only took me an hour to assemble them and now I have four great memories of our favorite city to greet me each morning and fall asleep to each night.  It's not the same as waking up to the cable car bells and the sounds of the bustling city, but it'll do.

Here's our new art in our room...

Our room is pretty small, so I couldn't get back far enough to fit everyone in the photo.