PRETTY AS A PICTURE

Towards the end of last year, my parents came home from visiting friends with two antique windows that had been mouldering away, unwanted, in some forgotten corner of the house. The idea was that I hang them on a wall in my room, but due to the daily demands of student life, the windows were left tucked away in the garage.

Fast forward to last Saturday, and there I was in the frames section of IKEA, a glazed look in my eyes as I absorbed the sheer volume of frames on offer. You see, one of the things I like to do is collect postcards. Not only travel postcards, but art postcards from galleries and museums, postcards of vintage ads, postcards of photographs I like - I collect them all. After several years of doing this, I now have a sizable stash. In my old room I plastered the postcards on my wall, but after having to deal with the residue of gunky tack on the wall when I packed up my room to move, I realised a change of tactics was in order.

So there I was in IKEA, hoping to buy an assortment of smallish frames in which to put my postcards so I could hang them salon-style in a cluster on my wall. This brilliant idea of mine became slightly less plausible when I started to calculate how many postcards I wanted to frame - $4.99 may seem like a rather good price for a funky little frame, but when you're multiplying that by a considerable number... well, the student budget is not so forgiving for things like room decor. I left IKEA empty-handed, sentencing my poor postcards to more long months of being bagged up under the bed. 

It was soon after this that I had a little eureka moment when I remembered the window panes stored in the garage - I could convert those into frames! Not only could each individual pane fit at least two postcards, but I would have antique-looking frames to perfectly complement my artsy postcards! 

What I have to work with - there's something infinitely appealing about the whole rustic vibe. Who knew rust could actually make things look better?!

Rust may be pretty, but it's messy too - a quick spray of this makes these frames postcard-placing, wall-hanging ready!

And so today, when I sorted through my postcards, I got to do one of my favourite things: look at pretty pictures for a little while. Why does that sound so simple? I suppose, though, that this is really at the heart of art-loving: enjoying pretty pictures. 

Believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Charlie enjoys the postcards too... but I think he might have different reasons for doing so than me!

Looking through pictures you love is like discovering them all over again. I took the time to to remind myself of some of my favourites...

Left: A postcard print by Kirsten McCrea at hellokirsten.com, Toronto.
Middle: Official portrait of Princes William and Harry by Fergus Greer, 2007, at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Right: Cityscape, Donald Hamilton Fraser, from the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2009, London.

Left: R.H., Isobel Peachey, at the National Portrait Gallery BP Award 2011, London.
Middle: Mariana in the South, 1897, by all-time favourite John William Waterhouse, at the Royal Academy, London.
Right: Helena Bonham Carter, Derry Moore, 1992 at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Left: Queen Elizabeth II, Eve Arnold, 1968 at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Middle: Joan of Arc, Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Right: Virginia Woolf, George Charles Beresford, 1902, at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Left: Cypresses, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, at The Real Van Gogh Exhibition 2010,  the Royal Academy, London.
Middle: James Dean, photographer unknown, from a stall in Camden Market, London.
Right: J.K. Rowling, Stuart Pearson Wright, 2005, at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Art appreciation complete, I arranged some postcards in one of the windows. I haven't yet decided how best to attach the postcards (a mount? hanging from string?) but once I muddle through it I'll have a rather lovely arrangement on my wall, methinks!

Voila! Dead chuffed!

Kitty x