I hate wide expanses of white walls. In my opinion, the more items covering blank spaces in my room, the better.
But unfortunately for me, the amount of posters and paintings that I like tend to cost money that I do not always have. So, to avoid spending my very limited income on keeping my preference for a highly decorated room, I turn to the piles of free newspapers around campus. In addition to providing more news than most students consume in a day, they are excellent materials for all your Do-It-Yourself needs.
My personal favorite DIY craft is to make posters out of the full-page ads in newspapers. For instance, The New York Times is currently featuring ads for Oscar-nominated films such as “Spotlight” and “The Big Short.”
To start turning these advertisements into decorations for your home, you need to find an old expanse of poster board or cardboard. I tend to use sides of old moving boxes, but any large expanse of relatively flat surface works. Then take pages from the newspaper you don’t want to use and glue them onto the poster board so that they cover up all visible cardboard, leaving a little bit of paper hanging off the edges. This creates a smoother surface for you to glue the advertisement on, and you can fold the extra newspaper bits back to cover the edges of the cardboard when you finish.
When that dries, paint the newspaper one solid color. I tend to go with black. Go over the poster twice to create an even coat. When it dries, take your advertisement and paste it in the center of the board. Then all that’s left to do is wait a little bit for everything to settle, and voilà, you have a brand new poster. Use either command strips or duct tape to keep it on the wall.
I also like to do this with articles relating to literature on smaller pieces of cardboard to fill up my wall with even more décor. Of course, if you’re not feeling up to crafting, you can always just tear the ad out of the paper and put it on the wall as-is.
If you’re looking for a more mosaic-type effect, the arts pages are the place for you. No matter what newspaper you pick up, this section is filled with the best images in the paper. For this, all you need to do is cut out the pictures which stand out to you the most. Then, using whatever you have, stick them on the wall in whatever order you like. I’m a personal fan of walls with small images organized by color, but it’s really up to you.
And this is just the tip of the newspaper-fueled DIY iceberg. Pinterest is full of all sorts of ideas for collages, book art and other projects for you to put these free materials to use.
@Ehmannky