There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold, and she's buying the stairway to heaven.

at this moment, i'm on top o' the world. i've finally finished the stairway project, got half of a big customer's project done today, and my fantastic husband made tacos for dinner. alrighty, stairway!! you saw in the last post that we had nothin' there and it was totally blank. i've been scouring thrift and antique stores, ebay, etsy, wherever i could find an interesting piece to add to the collection.

my idea was to use lots of different mirrors, frames, and sconces in a collection, and paint them all one color, to unify them as a single decor element. i chose yellow because the design was so risky (since it's not just me living here, and it's really super hard interesting trying to balance a decor that works for both sexes), and i thought most other colors would be too harsh and overwhelming, and white wouldn't be bold enough for the design. plus they only make so many colors of spray paint!

i did something a little different with the frames too, there are photos in a couple of them, but since we don't have kids and we don't have a lot of great display-worthy b&w photos of friends and fam, i used art, fabric, books, text, and even a map! i think (hope) it makes for a super interesting display that makes you wanna walk up the stairs to see what else is up there. anyway, here it is.

i'd never used an attachment like this for spray painting before but i'm tellin ya, if you are painting a lot, this little baby is necessary. right next to the spray paint @ walmart

i like krylon or rustoleum. this stuff wasn't fantastic on every piece i had for this project, but it mostly did the job.

i am fortunate to have access to a sweet spray painting booth, and my dad installed this turntable and he's got these little triangle guys that hold your stuff up off the surface, which is great because after spraying everything, i basically had a pool of sticky paint on the table

i arranged each item on the floor and printed a picture of it, and me and hubs set off for about 2 hours hanging everything. we didn't even fight about it, which is miraculous. i tend to get frustrated pretty quick when we're hanging things together, one of my many faults! i repaired the old frames that didn't have backing and what not, this is the 'before' filling them all in.

AFTER! tah-dah!

dictionary page from a set of dictionaries i have from 1948. variations of the word 'love'

photo of our view from the bed and breakfast room on the wine trip we took for our 1 year anniversary. goooooooood memories

awesome intaglio print done by an old classmate of mine from college. i L-O-V-E her prints, she is on the path to being a printer as we speak.

sweet candle holders and sconces! so fancy.

i especially love this. i got this meal sack from my grandpa, and it was real dirty, so i washed it, but then most of the color came out, so i was sad. BUT i think it works in this collection, it's not too bold to distract from the whole, but still interesting.

cute little mirror i found on etsy. it was white when i got it

i got an old mother goose book, i mean OLD. it's got a few offensive poems in it at this point lol.

found these gems on ebay. super cute

another article out of a 1936 Household Magazine. i'd like to eventually find a historically significant newspaper headline to use in this frame, it's square and a headline would look great in it.

wedding invitation looks great in a yellow frame!

love this fabric. it was a clearanced tablecloth at target!

one of my prints, it looks great in this bubble-glass frame

a map of our area. this one is so tiny but i think when you're looking at a large area on a map inside the small frame, it's a good visual contrast

screen prints of mine, big one is on fabric, little one is paper. the big one will probably be temporary until i find something more worthy of a big frame right at eye level.

view from the living room, this was a great way to keep track of the angle we were hanging everything at.

side note, i mentioned earlier that this was an awkward area, but now i think it's ok because there's so much other stuff to look at. i might put a little rug there sometime, mark the area visually as a place to put shoes by the door or something.