Craft Alert: Five-Minute Wall Art

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A severe case of “wall envy” drove me to hit the craft alarm, which sounded like the ice cream truck blasting its way through the neighborhood on a school night at 8:30 p.m., much to the dismay of neighbors with small children. (The neighborhood Facebook page exploded with accusations. Here’s just one example: “I’ll bet it wasn’t an ice cream truck. It was a weed truck!” Neighbors then hurled wild theories about songs that weed trucks would actually play. This went on well past children’s bedtimes.)

In any case, Zoom meetings are not going away any time soon in our house, and recently, I’ve had a slew of them. So, I’ve been exposed to lots of other peoples’ walls, while comparing them to my own blank walls. Typically, I’m satisfied with blank walls. In a blank room, I can think. I can fill the room with my thoughts, such as these: When’s the last time I’ve used the words Sea Monkeys in a blog post? Is it time to do that again? I think it’s time.

But now that I’ve seen other people’s walls, which are filled with all kinds of tasteful art and inspirational messages, I just think I should step up my game a bit. While an ocean of mint green with a “pop” of white doors in the background does reassure my workmates that I can be trusted to wear pants during a Zoom meeting, this background doesn’t exactly scream “I’ll get right on that assignment, and I’ll add Sea Monkeys!”

However, I didn’t want to go overboard with the Sea Monkey approach, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time/money, so I transformed an ordinary sheet of computer paper into a blast of blocks of similar shades of the same color. The whole project only took about five minutes or less. Here’s what I did:

–I found a piece of blank computer paper (estimated time spent: nanoseconds).

–I rummaged through Alex’s paint supplies and found some acrylic paints and some paintbrushes (estimated time spent: about one minute).

–In the kitchen, I found some aluminum foil for mixing the paints and a mug to fill with water (estimated time spent: about one minute).

–In my office, I experimented with “white” and “crimson” paints to create some different shades, and then I brushed them onto the paper (estimated time spent: about two-three minutes.)

Results:

I love the versatility. This masterpiece can be hung vertically or horizontally, so I can change my walls up a bit, as long as I don’t use duct tape as my adhesive/hanging device (which I am always tempted to do). And now, the Sea Monkeys have new scenery if they’re sick of staring at the same four walls.

Your Turn: Have you spent much time in Zoom meetings? What’s your favorite background that you’ve seen and/or used?

Published by ckennedy

Author of the DIY blog: Fixin' Leaks and Leeks. Paper/Rock Writing Consultation, Sole Proprietor.

30 thoughts on “Craft Alert: Five-Minute Wall Art”

  1. I only recently discovered that my boss isn’t really in a very clean white office room in her house because I was in a Zoom meeting and saw someone with the exact same room. Apparently there are all kinds of virtual backgrounds you can use that look like you’re in a loft or an office. And then I realized that half the people I work with are NOT in cool, well-decorated rooms when someone’s background flipped off and she was sitting in her bedroom with a pile of laundry on the bed behind her!

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  2. As Mydangblog noted above, you can have all kinds of fake backgrounds. I Zoom from an office (we work in bubbles here) that’s sometimes messy, sometimes not; I don’t put in a background. I actually don’t care as we’re all just trying to get through this thing. I’ll be happy to just see more normalcy! 🙂

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    1. Nate has experimented with lots of different backgrounds for his Zoom meetings. We both graduated from Ohio State University, so he has Brutus the Buckeye in the background a lot–plus the cat on his lap:)

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  3. I rent, so I have bare walls. Even if I owned a home, I’d probably still have blank walls.
    I’ve been doing lots of video teleconferences, and I slip in a fake background. It’s usually a photograph of something like the local lake or a sunrise.

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  6. Hate zoom with a blinding passion. At the beginning of pandemic one of the first things my friend M said that zoom was probably bad because you got a glimpse at how people really live, and that’s not necessarily a good thing

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  7. love your art work. you could always try other colors and change the picture based on your outfit or color mood. Keep your co-workers on their toes. I have done live streams with my education blog so I created a space in my basement using moving blankets as the background. For my husband, we re-arranged his office and purchased a large photograph of one of the Pittsburgh bridges for his background. He is on zoom meetings all day and we decided he needed a professional looking backdrop.

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  11. I always say that fun, cool craft projects don’t have to be hours, nor does it have to be expensive. The zoom meetings sparked your creative juices and you used what was around you. The wall piece is nice and you just gave me an idea. For the day job, we meet via Microsoft teams and the teams have some amazing wall and background decor.

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