For the past 18 months, I have been working little by little to transform our house into our home. If you have been following along, you know that I tend to shy away from conventional styles, colors, and methods. I got to a place some years ago where I became pretty comfortable and confident in my style. Rather than caring much about what people thought, I started to design around things that inspired and spoke to me. I think this little nook is the perfect snapshot of my process. It shows all the crazy thoughts in my head and how it comes to life in my design.
I had images that were a constant source of inspiration in one hand and a nook connected to a high traffic area that needed some life in the other. In this post, I share how I combined the two and ended up creating my own wallpaper in the process. It was fun, easy, and something I know you could do in your own home!
It started with this little nook.
For a while, I had samples of wrapping paper taped to sections of the nook. I pondered how I could bring the design of the paper to life on the walls. Ultimately, this lead me to taking that inspiration to another bedroom where I painted a floral wall inspired by the wrapping paper. Since I put that look somewhere else in our house, it left me once again trying to decide what to do with this nook. I wanted to accent it in some way. I tried several paint samples, but none of them looked right.
One day I was drinking a tea and started flipping through a book I flip through often for inspiration. It sits on a side table to be a quick read. As I was thumbing through it for the 100th time, I had the thought, “I wish I could see all the pages at once. They are so beautiful.” Almost as quick as the thought came, it was followed by thinking of my accent wall I had been trying to figure out. Could these book pages be collaged in a way to make wallpaper?
I really didn’t give it any time or research before knowing I wanted to try my idea. I started ripping my beloved book up page by page. Once I had ripped out all the pages, I had a huge stack of beautiful paper. I used scissors and cut off all the frayed edges. I was then ready to figure out the wallpaper method.
I taped a few pages up in different directions to figure out if I wanted a messy scattered look or if I wanted it to look more like organized rows. I decided I liked the messy look. I went to Lowes and asked where the wall paper paste was located. To my surprise, there was a roller of wallpaper paste made for doing wallpaper boarders. It was the perfect size for my project! It was a small bottle with a roller to easily apply the paste to my book pages.
I gathered a few other supplies. The most important was the wallpaper smoothing tool. It’s similar to a putty knife or a joint knife used in drywall work. It’s critical to flatten your paper and push out the air bubble. You will also need something to cut your pages as you work around light switches or to reach the borders of your wall. You might want to try an x-acto knife or box cutter to trim the pages. I found it easiest to hold my piece of paper in place, draw a line where it might need to be trimmed against the door trim/ceiling/wall corner/etc, to use scissors to cut the paper, and then start the applying method.
Most of the pieces didn’t need to be trimmed. I simply picked a page and decided which side of it I liked best, and rolled my wallpaper paste onto the side that would be up against the wall. I rotated the piece of paper different little angles so it didn’t look perfect and pressed it onto the wall. I then used the smoothing tool and pressed all the wrinkles and air bubbles out.
A few little things I thought through as I worked…
- The book printed its images on both sides of the pages. Sometimes it was really hard to decide which side to display and which side to glue to the wall. Fortunately, one book was not enough to cover my wall. I ordered a second book and got to use some of the sides that I didn’t get to use before.
- I tried to space colors out on the wall, I didn’t want a bunch of blueish pages, for instance, to all end up together. Spreading them all apart gave a more balanced look.
- I placed some of my favorite quotes in more prominent eye level spaces. Smaller text and images I placed more towards the ceiling or floor.
- I tried to place a full-page pictures in the midst of some quotes, so it didn’t end up that all the pictures were bunched up together and all the quote pages bunched up together.
- I stood back often to take a look at the wall to see what needed to happen next. This helped place smaller print scaled pages throughout the wall to help other pages pop out more.
- I was careful in my placement to make sure that the coverage was solid and none of the wall was left poking out through any small cracks or gaps.
It was really messy. I used a huge old sign and placed it on the floor as my mobile work space, and it had gluey wallpaper paste all over it. I probably could have sorted my pages out to have a stack of images vs. a stack of quotes, etc, but I didn’t. The creative in me decided to just go for it. Some of you organized folks will probably have a much more calculated way to go about it, which is great!
For me, I viewed it as a puzzle and kept filling it in until it was all filled up to the sides and from the ceiling to the floor. After I had a solid collage, I rolled my wallpaper paste over the whole wall as a layer of protection from dirty fingers and hairy dogs.
I love how it all came together! It’s so colorful and fun! The book, How to be a Wildflower by Katie Daisy, costs $11.46 on Amazon. I ended up buying two books from there. What an inexpensive way to buy wallpaper we love, to brighten up a small space!
This door leads into our garage. It is the most used door in our house. We can see this little nook from our kitchen, which is part of why I wanted to brighten up the space! It is also our walk through laundry room into my craft room. This small nook is one high traffic space!
I love how these beautiful pages are perfect for inspiration and deep conversations. The other day I was sitting at the table with my kids, and I asked them what they thought one of the pages meant when it said, “gather unlikely friendships.” It has led into some of the most real, challenging, and beautiful conversations.
Now, as I stand here and fold clothes, I can turn around and see so much beauty. If you don’t follow Katie Daisy on Instagram, you should. She is so talented and lives with her husband and sweet boy near Bend, Oregon. She originally painted each one of these images and then scanned them to create the book. Her feed is full of gorgeousness from her work and nature.
This little nook is a well used space in our home, and now as we come and go and just live…we can be inspired. It’s a small wall with a huge punch.
Matt and I joke that the more we do to this house, the more that we make it “ours”, the more we might have a hard time reselling it someday. This house is full of color and personality…just like us! We love it!
If you are interested in some of the other projects featured in these pictures, you can find more info in these posts…
Thank you so much for checking out my homemade wallpaper post. I hope you have a great week and get to create something beauitful!
It is easy to fall into a birthday buying rut…especially for your husband. Do you know what I mean?
After I had cut all the wood, we started playing with the best way to attach our side boards to the 12″ squares. Those squares were going to act as our top and bottom of the table, so in short we were building a box.
We used my Ryobi Brad Nailer. It’s my absolute favorite tool. You may remember it from our 
After our box was complete, Jeremiah came in and sanded it down. He used a rough grit sandpaper and went to town on that thing. This boy of mine loves working with his hands. He often sands scrap wood next to me as I paint signs. He will be some kind of artist someday.
After the box was sanded, we screwed on four little wheels we got at our local hardware store for a couple bucks. I marked a spot on the bottom of the box, and Caleb used the screwgun to get the wheels in place.
Once our box was turned right side up and looked more like an end table, we decided it needed a little shelf in the middle to make it more practical. Caleb measured the wood and Jeremiah painted it. We used scrap wood to help give the shelf a little ridge to rest on and used the brad nailer to hold them in place.
Here is the part Reagan was dying for. She got to paint the whole thing. She got quite messy and painted herself in large parts too by bending every which way to cover her project. She had a blast.
Once the paint was dry, we gave it a light sanding job and then stained it.
At times I wanted to jump in and remove a paint drip or wipe off the stain a bit better, but I refrained. I wanted it to be their piece, and it really does look more vintage-y, quirky fun for it. I just love it, and Matt did too!
Here you can see it with his yellow chairs. It fits right in the middle of that nook to hold a coffee, but it can be wheeled out to hold a laptop for a quick meeting as well. Reagan got to paint a frame too 🙂
This was a gift that had time and thought…and it’s practical! I don’t know how much it ended up costing since we had some of the supplies. You can use scrap wood-even for the top and bottom square pieces! Take this idea, modify it to make it your own (in size, style, etc), and have fun!
Have you shopped for wallpaper recently?
The small window does not let in a lot of natural light, so I painted this room a very, very faint blue to try and brighten up the space as much as possible. You can see the before wall color and other half of the room 
The first step was to pick out my colors. One reason I think my first floral wall took so long was I used cheap paint. I decided I needed to use nicer than the the least expensive acrylic paint bottles at the craft store. I ended up opting for paint samples mostly of the HGTV paint line at Lowes, and they were perfect.
Each flower needed two coats. The only one that needed more was my fushia flower. The color has some red in it…which is always a hard color to paint. Red will always needs lots of coats. After each flower was covered in coats, I started adding more detailed layers to the flowers. I ended up leaving the limey green leaves in one coat. I liked the painted look it created.
These pictures aren’t the best but are what I sent to my sisters and a few friends as I painted. I was obsessed and excited as the floral wall took shape. It was addicting and really only took a few days working off and on! I made a decision to enjoy it and not let it stress me out. I painted each flower like I would on a sign. I didn’t worry about the edges being “perfect”, but left them to have a slight brushed look. The simple imperfection and not correctly centered flower centers make all the little artsy elements come together to create a really fun/funky yet pretty look that I love. 
I really love how it came out! The flowers are simple yet beauitful. The pops of colors play together well and create a really warm, fun feel. That light blue wall was the perfect base to embellish on.
This floral wall allowed that room to be a little more fun, yet it didn’t add a huge amount of color that would make a small, poorly lit room feel even smaller or dark. 
What do you think? Would you try to paint your own “wallpaper”? The thing with this design is I can just paint over it when we tire of it. For now, we love hanging out in this room.
The creativity in this world amazes me.
While the wrapping paper was taped to the wall, I looked at it off and on and thought how much I loved the print. I decided I wanted to try my hand at painting some flowers inspired by this design. I had a base wood sign that I had already built and painted white. It was a blank canvas waiting to be embellished and make into something. I came up with this idea to create a sign off a phrase that I have done a couple of times before (like in 
It was so fun just going for it. I loved laying my colors on top of each other and adding some details to the flowers to add another depth and color to the painting. It took a little while to wait for colors to dry before I could build on them. In between homeschooling and life I would capture a layer or two, so this part of the sign alone took about three days. It was worth it. I love how the sun was so much more fun and unique because of these flowers and to think it was all inspired by a piece of wrapping paper.
After I sanded, I painted on Minwax’s Early American stain and rubbed it off with an old cloth.
I loved what this step did to the sign. My last step was to add the frame and stain it as well. I quickly measured the pieces and nailed them into place. My sign was finished, and I just adore it!
I think it is a beautiful combination of color with a rustic/artsy edge. It’s so fun. This popular phrase has been made into all kinds of signs, but a small piece of wrapping paper helped me create a sign that I had not done/seen before. I love that we can find inspiration in the craziest of places.
There are items that we can expect to find inspiration. Magazines, blog posts, and Pinterest are just few normal places to find inspiration. What are some of the weird ones you have found inspiration?