Wall of Wisdom

If you love a good quote, saying, expression or motivational poster maybe you'd like to create a "wall of wisdom".

Our new house has a good sized downstairs toilet (privy, lav, loo, cloakroom, john, WC ... any more names?) It is much nicer than the teeny one we had at the old house but possibly the most boring décor on the planet. It was just a white box.

In the old house we created a "wall of wisdom" by writing quotes, sayings, expressions directly on the wall using sharpies. It was simple, fun and always a talking point but had two major flaws: the sharpies smudged when splashed with water and when we moved we had to leave it behind. For the new smarter loo I wanted to recreate the Wall of Wisdom in a better, cuter and more flexible way.

The only casualty in the move was the glass in a large wooden picture frame. The frame itself survived so I gave it a few coats of white spray paint and used it as the basis of our new wall. One of the best things about the wall we had in the old house was that anyone could add to it as they wanted. I was keen to keep that interactive element so thought by using a glass-less frame and label stickers to organise the space this could be an ongoing thing.

As well as my big ol' glass-less frame I reused a couple of frames that I'd spray painted turquoise years ago (from our bedroom at the old house) and a couple of Ikea Nyttja frames in red. I also picked up a load of very cute Martha Stewart stickers on sale at our local Staples store. The colours of these stickers were perfect for the colours I had imagined for our new Wall of Wisdom.

I did have to buy a large sheet of poster board, which I cut to fit the frame. Without the glass the back was too loose and the white board gave me a great base to start sticking.

When we did this at the old house we had made a list of all the quotes and expressions in alphabetical order. Just so when someone had a new one we could quickly check it wasn't already there! You think you are going to know what up there but we'd had a couple of duplicates that I had to paint over, it's worth making a list.
I scoured the internet for the quotes and saying we wanted to keep from the list, looking for cute printable versions in the right colours.

1:http://www.lovepapercrafts.com/free-printable-home-decor/
2: http://sarah.theworkexperiment.com/hurihia-to-aroaro-ki/
3: http://brightlybeautifulblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/you-will-always-look-lovely.html
4: http://nhne-pulse.org/quote-vivian-greene/
5: https://www.umpquabank.com/fromcanyonville/#inspiration-1

I also used quite a few from this lovely collection from Thirty Hand Made Days

The rest of the small quotes that are printed are either picked up from pinterest and I can't find the source or I made them myself. I used my old favourite Picmonkey to make some, I created speech bubbles on word documents and added text boxes, and I added text boxes over bits of clip art.
Everything else I hand wrote, in my best writing, onto the cute labels with coloured pens.

I just started in one corner and worked my way up. I tried to keep everything straight and lined up, and I tried to keep a good balance of small and large items.

I actually did the smaller red frame first, kind of like a practice run, then moved onto the big frame.

In the old turquoise frames I used 2 beautiful printables that I printed out their original size.
The "As we arise each morning" printable quote comes from Simple as That and the "Change your Thoughts" one comes from Mama Miss.

The Map art quote is one I made. It's really simple to make with your computer, printer and an old map book or road atlas. 

I had come across two road atlas's when packing for our move and held on to them with a map art type project in mind. It's a good thing I kept both as I had a bit of a fail on my first attempt! You can see the full tutorial, including details of my blunder and how to avoid it, over at The Pinning Mama here.

I love our new Wall of Wisdom SOOOO much! There are a few gaps on a couple of the stickers so more fabulous quotes can be added in the future.
It really represents all of the family too, quotes from everyone from Jane Austen to Doctor Who, Shakespeare to Dumbledore, The Dalai Lama to Star Wars!

It took a little while to get this all together, not the quickest project I've ever done but at least now people have something to read whilst they are in the smallest room in the house!

If anyone spots their quote art here and I've not linked it to your source, please do let me know and I'll get that linked properly. I've included everything I could find, but one of two things I used from pinterest had links that went nowhere and Google image search wasn't able to help me either.

All the top quality photos in this post were taken by our daughter, you can find her website here

You might also be interested in:

Personalised Wedding Picture

Papercut quotes

Share a Coke With Picture

Simple Speech Bubble Cards

I'll be linking up this project at all these lovely link parties, pop over for a look at loads of projects from other blogs.