Office Wall Idea

On Thursdays, the Washington Post has a chat session with two of the Home & Garden writers. I always make some time to sneek a couple of peeks at the conversation between 11 and noon, eastern time, even when I was living in the UK. The gals always have great paint suggestions and resources, especially for those living in the Baltimore/Washington area.

Today, someone asked what to do to the blank walls of her office. Obviously, painting wasn't an option. I am probably late to the game and you all probably already know about this, but I wrote in with the suggestion of using the RASTERBATOR! I found this marvelous on-line tool on the Bluelines blog.

To use the Rasterbator, you up-load a photograph and they convert it into a PDF, using as many sheets of paper as you want. Then you can print it out, either in colour or black & white. Make sure you change the paper from A4 size to letter size if you're in the US. The larger the size of the file (up to 1mb) and the larger the dots (up to 100mm), the clearer the picture comes out. It's like a half-tone picture blown up.

As I've mentioned, I had to kit out my house from scratch - from salt & pepper shakers to the essentials like a mixer and a cork screw - so artwork on the walls hasn't been a top priority, especially in the non-public spaces in the house. I took a photograph I had from V.V. Rouleaux and Rasterbated it and then printed it out on 24 sheets of paper.

I used a matte photo paper, so the colours would be bright. I trimmed the edges and then scotch-taped it to the wall. It's just a temporary fix until I find the right thing. My walls are brick under rock plaster, so it's very difficult to get anything other than a thumb-tack into them. The picture above would probably look better in a dining room, but I liked the colours and was just sooo sick of a blank wall.

Another idea I had for this was to print out a photo, and frame the sheets in identical frames, butting them up against each other in a grid. I will have to try that in the guest room. The top picture is the first picture I rasterbated, but I made the dots too small and didn't like the way it turned out.

Try this... It's really fun to Rasterbate!