My Newfangledness: My Tribute to the Ayers Family Carpet Wall

OK, I have been waiting to post this and every time I sit down and try something happens, but not this time!!

So many of you may wonder why the post name is what it is. Well a little background story: My Grandparents before they remodeled their house in Utah. Had a wall that as you went down the stairs into the basement, was covered in all kinds of different carpet pieces ( different sizes, colors, style, etc.). I LOVED the wall as a little girl and was very upset when they got rid of it ( I may be the only one in the family that was ). Of course there is no way on earth my husband will let me do that on our wall ( and believe me I am crazy like that and probably would do it ). When we moved I found this great chest for my fabric to go in and in the drawers are some other craft things.
I was not a really big fan of the top and was wanting something different ( other than painting it ). So after about a day it finally hit me, I will make my own type of carpet wall! So that is what I did ( and I stayed up tell 4a.m. putting it together ).

- I love Mod Podge, best invention :) There are many types of Mod Podge out there, but for this project I used the hard coat kind ( I have found when mod podging wood this kind is the better route) The bottle I used was a 8FL OZ bottle and I used almost all of it for this project. You will need a sponge paint brush, I used scrapbook paper ( I wish it was carpet though ) I used 12X12 sheets and just randomly cut them, the amount of paper you get will depend on what you are covering ( for this I had about 10 and still had about 4 full sheets left and scraps). When I mod podge I always like to use a brayer (the rolling pin looking thing) just because mod podge is a form of adhesive and can sometimes make the paper bubble up. But usually when you roll the brayer over it a few times you can get the bubbles out.

- When I started I just went with the flow ( like most of my projects) I did not measure any of the cuts of paper. I would cut a piece would lay it down and see where I thought it looked good and I mod podged it down before the next piece was even cut. This is one thing I have always loved about creating,this is your work and nobody can tell you that you are doing it wrong. Find a method you feel comfortable with and like and go with it! if you want to measure the cut paper then go for it, if you want to eyeball it like me then go for it, if you have another way of cutting it out then go for it! Just have fun!
So for anyone that has never mod podged before ( again many people do it different ways, and that is just fine) but how I do it is I take what ever I am working with, in this case paper. I dip the brush in the mod podge and get enough to paint on the back of the paper ( sometime with heavier weight paper I will put a little mod podge on the surface I am working with as well) once you have it painted on, then just lay it down watching for those bubbles and smoothing it out as you lay it. Then repeat with the next piece.

- In most cases I would mod podge everything down then go back over the top of the paper with a layer or so over mod podge. But since this trunk was big, I did it more in sections. I would piece together one section, then before I kept going I would put the top layer over what I had just done. The picture above is showing the first section that I had pieced together with the top coat.
- I then just kept on repeating those steps, section by section as I pieced the paper where I thought it looked good.

- This was the finished product with the top coat of mod podge as well. I even took it one step further and added spray on walnut ink on top, to give it that distressed feel to it. Just a tip, if you do this last step. The walnut ink did take awhile to dry, so you will want to keep little hands away :)