Crafty, crafty - making a picture

I love pictures, but I surprised myself by finding them the hardest thing to buy when we moved into our flat. To me pictures should be personal, they should mean something, and if not, they should be especially stylish and amazing to make up for it! I intend to run through lots of the pictures in our house at some point, but thought I'd start with credit-crunch-crafty-pictures! The ones you can make yourself. Again forgive my complete lack of practical artistic ability...

If, like me, you’re not a dab hand with a paint brush or a pencil, then don’t despair, you can cheat. I love the effect achieved here, and it really was very, very simple. I just bought a sheet of this cool Penguin books wrapping paper (for £1.50!), and cut it to fit a simple Ikea ribba frame. As you’ve probably gathered I do love my books, so this seemed appropriate. And hopefully not too many people will have the same thing.

You could frame lots of things like this - a nice piece of wallpaper, a scrap of fabric, a funky tea towel…

My boyfriend has a recording studio in our flat (sadly we don’t have soundproofing…) and we’ve made some great pictures for the walls, again using Ikea Ribba frames. You can buy ones that have CD sized mounts, and so we’ve framed artwork from his singles and album to make very personal (and quite professional looking) images. His musician friends are always envious. We also took a few pictures of the precious recording equipment, and framed them too. They look really cool, and are personal too!