Remember when I said I was ordering two prints from Society6 to hang in my foyer, back in January? I wasn’t lying – I ordered them the next day – but it’s taken me until now to get them both hung! Whoops!

I mentioned that the standard sizes on Society6 don’t fit in the Ikea Ribba frame mats. That was a bit of a deterrent for Earl the Octopus.

Luckily, I remembered that Jenny at Little Green Notebook had run into the same problem, and her genius solution was to just paint out the gap with a solid, contrasting color. I thought about mounting Earl on a piece of solid scrapbook paper, but I felt like he deserved better, you know? I really wanted to give Earl an ocean to swim in. So, I busted out my cheapo watercolor set and painted him one.

(Don’t mind the orange blob behind it. That might end up being a creation for the living room. Maybe not.)

Next, I needed to cut off Earl’s extra edges. I used my paper trimmer with the laser guide so that I wouldn’t screw up. Nobody wants a crooked rectangle on full display!

While all this was going on, I had also spray-painted my Ikea Ribba frame gold. I know, I know – cut it out with the gold spray paint, woman! – but I literally have eight white Ribba frames in my foyer already. EIGHT! It was getting out of hand.

After days of drying time and a lot of double-sided tape, I finally managed to get Earl mounted in the ocean, the ocean mounted onto the mat, and the mat and glass shoved back into the spray-painted frame. SUCCESS!

I LOVE how it came out. I had originally meant for the ocean to be a darker shade of blue-green, but my cheapo watercolors have very little pigment, so this was the best I could do. I’m happy with it, though! I think it really POPS. Total price for this framed art? $26. Bam.

I also finally hung the other print, Tchmo’s Untitled (Cloudscape), on the gallery wall. This sizing issue was resolved much more easily – I just got the size that was a little larger than the mat opening, and cut off a bit of the edges. No harm done. I wasn’t a huge fan of the red, anyway.

That frame on the bottom left always goes crooked for some reason! I fixed it after this photo was taken, I swear.

The giant piece of Pirouette marbled paper has been hanging up for a while, too, but I don’t think I ever posted a picture of it on the wall. Bad blogger!

So that’s all my foyer art! I’m a pretty big fan of it. Find out more about it here and here.

What process do you use to fill your walls with pretty things? Long-term collection, or buying all at once?