Filling some blank wall space

October 11, 2004 8:22 AM

After moving around some furniture, my one-room appartment has two large areas of empty wall, both about 2m by 2m (above the bed and the couch). While there's always posters and framed art, I'm looking for something that leaves a little less wall uncovered; I can't find any posters that approach those dimensions. The rasterbator is nice, but I want something with a little more high-saturation colour. I'm currently toying with the idea of buying lots of film, music, fine art, etcetera posters and tessellating them, but this isn't cheap. Any better ideas?

Pointers to places selling large (near 2m high) posters would also be appreciated.

posted by fvw to home & garden (10 comments total)

For each spot you could buy 3-4, 2ft x 2ft blank canvasses and paint them in a solid color complementary to your current wall color. Hang each a few inches apart to fill the space.
posted by FreezBoy at 9:22 AM on October 11, 2004

It's a little amateurish, but in college I once bought two copies of the same magazine and covered an entire wall with it in sequential order (front cover, page one, page two...back cover), so you could read the whole thing while standing at the wall. This isn't quite right for your situation, but maybe it will spark an idea.
posted by jpoulos at 9:23 AM on October 11, 2004

Maybe a wallpaper mural?
posted by sad_otter at 11:02 AM on October 11, 2004

Wall graphic decals or stretched fabric canvases are two nice possibilities found at the gorgeous MoCoLoco deign log (see the wallcovering page).
posted by taz at 11:18 AM on October 11, 2004

make art--collage, the canvas thing....

or get some old school blackboards (or blackboard paint) and go nuts : >
posted by amberglow at 11:55 AM on October 11, 2004

or taking your own suggestion of rasterbator and then stealing freezboy's idea of painting canvases...

you could always rasterbate an image and then buy a big pile of pre-gesso'd masonite boards sized appropriate to your printed paper size (or multiple thereof to save $, e.g. 16x20) and transfer the rasterbated image to the gesso board using acrylic paint, either keeping the quasi-pointilistic style or converting to solid color regions.
posted by dorian at 12:44 PM on October 11, 2004

While sad_otter's link is exactly what I had in mind when asking the question, the other suggsetions are too interesting to skip. Good thing I have two empty walls.

Thank you all, you have (as always) been incredibly helpful.
posted by fvw at 1:25 PM on October 11, 2004

If I'm not too late and FWIW:

Our apartment has highly texturized plaster walls (think indoor stucco that shatters if you try to set an anchor) which suck for hanging things on. We ended up stringing wire in odd patterns all over the walls and then paperclip memento-esque junk to the wire. After a few months of random photos, concert tickets, interesting cards, etc. we have something akin to a vertical scrapbook which makes for interesting viewing and occupies visitors for hours. If it gets too shaggy, you can always trim away the old/uninteresting stuff.
posted by Fezboy! at 1:44 PM on October 11, 2004

Hmm, interesting idea. A place to put all the odd pieces of paper that accumulate would definately be useful.

To anybody else with an idea: By all means add it, I'll be checking this thread regularly until it expires. And so will hundreds of others who can use your ideas no doubt.
posted by fvw at 2:02 PM on October 11, 2004

not quite that size (maybe 2mx1.3m), but on our kitchen wall we have a poster advertising a paint company. i liked the campaign, my partner contacted the company and they kindly gave us a couple of old posters for free. we took the better one, made a simple backboard from hardboard and wooden strips (around the edge to give it some depth, stained to the right colour, and across the middle to strengthen it) and then glued the poster to the frame (white woodworking glue - use a fair amount and squeeze out bubbles quickly).

i've also taken a photo of a computer screen, had that printed to a similar size, and mounted it similarly. the printing wasn't very much (maybe 40-50 dollars?) and it looks good too.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:17 PM on October 11, 2004