I would like to introduce to you my associate, Michael Smith.  He is a fellow DIYer and we are always trading stories about our latest projects.  Michael wrote this post a while ago, and in case you missed it I thought now would be a great time to re-share it.  Here is a feature wall he created with his son.  Enjoy! This project came from two different ideas. The first one; do you remember back when you were growing up?  You had all the “cool things” you loved plastered on your bedroom walls.  Sports figures, bands, actresses and actors, even models: you get the idea.  What would happen when you ran out of wall space or your taste changed? You had to pull it all back down again and go spend more money on another poster or album cover.

Now bear with me, this is where the second idea comes in. It has been on the DIY scene for sometime now.  The “feature wall.”  Some sort of decorative treatment to make a statement.  Old barn-wood (one of my favorites), wallpaper, stencils, lighted walls and even sold brick walls.  All which are super cool but can go out of style, be expensive to do and can be difficult to switch out if you change your mind.

This project is the brain child of smashing those two ideas together for a kid friendly feature wall in my son’s room. This was a project we could work on together, it is relatively easy and does not require very much time. All you need is a pair scissors, some scotch tape and magazines. Did I mention scotch tape? Lots and lots of it.

At this point in his life my son is into every sport under the sun and fascinated with not only every superstar on every team, but every third string and reserve or bench player.  He is also interested in teams and players from the past. So we came up with this idea to get all of those people onto a wall and still have the option to change as time goes by.

We started by cutting out all of the full page pictures in sports magazines. We used Sport Illustrated, ESPN, Golf Digest and even newspaper clippings.  Then we went back through the same magazines and cut out whatever was left over. These pictures range from half a page size all the way down to a 3 x 5 size and even down to the size of a postage stamp. After this we went back through our full page pictures and cut out some complete silhouettes of an athlete in the picture. After all of the cutting (trust me there were several times I was wishing we were cutting pieces of pie instead of pictures) it was time to place the full-page pictures on the wall.

I chose scotch tape to fix the pictures to the wall for several reasons. One reason was because it is easy to use, second reason it’s very cost-effective, and lastly it doesn’t damage the walls if you have to remove the tape.  We started by placing the pictures in the top left corner of the wall and worked our way toward the right and then started the second row on the right and worked our way left.  We repeated this process all the way down the wall.

We then used the smaller pictures to cover the seams where the two full sheets came together and then even smaller pictures to cover any address labels. This gave the wall the patchwork/quilted look that we were hoping for.

I love the way it turned out. I think it looks really cool and it was easy to do.  It’s also super easy to add a picture of that next up-and-coming superstar in whatever sport it may be. My son loves it and it was an easy project for us to do together.