BEFORE & AFTER: give your room a mini makeover with photo art

Now that the kitchen makeover is behind me, I’m restless and have moved on to the living room area. There’s nothing wrong with my current living room, in fact it was lovely enough to be featured in Covet Garden Home, but being the decor junkie that I am I like to change things up. It’s been 6 years since I moved into my loft and it’s about time. Don’t worry, this one won’t take a whole year like the kitchen, it’s much more of a refresh than a total overhaul. The plan is to make mostly cosmetic changes with one big furniture swap.

The easiest way to change things up in your space is change the art so that’s where I started. My photographer pal Maya Visnyei and I did this fun vintage camara series a few years ago and I still love it. I love it so much that I want to take one of the photos and blow it up to replace the current photo I have. I’m going to say that since you can’t actually tell it’s me that it’s not narcissistic whatsoever. Right? Here’s what the living room looked like not that long ago with the current framed photo.

It was a little hard to say goodbye to my vintage turquoise abandoned bus because it was one of the very first photos I ever took with my new fancy DSLR. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing but thanks to the golden hour and some good framing it came out beautifully. I’ll roll it up for another time & place with a lot more rooms and wall space.

I decided to go with the mustard yellow dress and camera photo because I think it will go best with my new colour scheme. Plus this is my favourite dress and it happens to have a funny story.  Well I can laugh about it now. Back in the height of my online dating days someone spilled hot red candle wax all over it on my worst first blind date ever. He showed up at the bar drunk and there was a candle on the table and well….. in case you’re wondering, this is how you get wax out of clothes. No, there wasn’t a second date but I did run into him at a party and shocking he was drunk again but even more shocking is that he recognized me.

I decided to get rid of the mat and take the photo right to the edge for a more modern look. Thanks to Photobox.ca I was able to get this huge pro poster size print done for a super affordable price and it’s a Canadian website so no crazy shipping issues! This is a 30″x 40″ print (that’s big!) and it costs $47.99 (+ tax & shipping). That’s crazy good. You can pretty much get any  photo printed on anything or in any way on Photobox. There’s endless options. They always have a great offer going so keep checking in to see what the deal is. All prints were 40% off when I ordered this so it was even more of a steal and the quality is great.

Here’s what this corner looks like now. I temporarily also changed the wall art on the side but I’m not sure if that’s staying yet.

I’m loving the new photo art! Getting rid of the mat really added to the size and impact of the photo and I think it really freshens up the space. I used a good ‘ol affordable Ikea frame which does the job perfectly.

It’s time to get those photos off your computer and on your walls!