The Little Lemon Exhibit

I finally have another DIY project under my belt and it feels GOOD! 

There are two alcoves in our entry hallway, across from "the yellow room", that have been screaming at me to decorate/fill them in some way every time I walk past ("Fill me!!!! Fill me!"). I finally answered with a project that cost less than $40 total and allows us to showcase the original creations of our little artist in her first Art Exhibition (ha ha!)!

I've been eyeing square pieces of cork at Wal-Mart for months, but with their price tag ($12 for four 12x12 ish squares), creating anything more than a 8x8 grid was going to cost an arm and a leg. I visited my local Home Depot, but found that they don't sell cork that can be cut to any desired size like I thought they might.

Then, on a Thursday afternoon trip to Dollarama with my Dad (seriously, living here is the BEST), I found two-packs of cork tiles that are similar to the Wal-Mart square cork tiles for $2. I bought one pack and brought them home to get the Hubby's opinion of my idea.

What was my idea? I wanted to create a wall of cork tiles in one of the entryway alcoves so that we could hang pictures and showcase the little Lemon's artwork. He was on board and back I went to Dollarama to clean them out of cork tiles.

Here are the components of this project:

24 cork tiles and two packages of "mounting tape", also from Dollarama. I also grabbed a roll of tape from Home Depot in case the cheap stuff didn't work out (I always like to have a Plan B).

My next step was to figure out how to best adhere 24 of these suckers to the wall. I started out using the approach depicted in the photo below, but in the end added a piece of mounting tape to the middle and sides of each square as well. I also included a piece of the tape to tie the squares together. 

 It took about an hour to adhere all of the squares together. The trick was getting the first row level (much thanks to the Hubby and his trusty rusty level...and his quality control to ensure I'm DIYing with correct measurements), but once the first six squares were on the wall, it was easy going from there.

Here is the end result:

Here it is! The Little Lemon Exhibit in all its glory.

Now that other alcove is looking a lot more empty. That will have to be my next DIY project!

Here it is looking the other way, into the kitchen/great room. 

Isn't this cotton ball piece of art awesome? Love the things my girl creates!

More of Emmy's beautiful creations. 

I love it. I keep finding myself in front of it, looking at the drawings and paintings that Emmy created with her own two hands (ok, I also added one of my own too). Next year at Christmas, we will use the cork wall to display cards we receive and I can't wait for that! So happy with how this turned out!