Rustic Décor with a Contemporary Flair

I finished the second décor item for my new laundry room yesterday (I posted about the first - the tiny houses -  here) and spent a frustrating morning trying to photograph it. It is hanging on a long skinny wall near the entrance to the laundry and visible from the kitchen. Lighting it for good photography is impossible with the equipment I have. But I tried. I am not thrilled with the photos but I love the piece.

For this piece I used inspiration for a design created by Liv and Jeff McMillan and shared on both Apartment Therapy and Curbly. They created their wall art by sticking wood slices to the wall. I approached it differently and will share my technique in a tutorial in my next post.

The construction is made up of over 50 slices of wooden branches. If you have been following me for any time you'll know I love working with materials from nature and branches in particular. I have posted an entire series on inspirations for branches in décor here. If you love branches you should check out that resource. For this project I used smooth bark varieties including maple and black birch.

The branches were of a variety of diameters with the largest about 4". I cut them into a variety of heights and worked to create a random composition with them.

I considered the long skinny wall, right inside the door of my laundry room and created a composition with proportions just for that wall.

This piece looks rather static straight on, but the beauty of this location is that I always approach it from an angle and the various depth add to the dynamic composition.

And the view from the kitchen is truly inviting.

One of the reasons I designed my laundry room is to have a place to stage entertaining events, you know those huge family Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. My plan was to keep the door shut and contain the mess and mayhem of entertaining in this room. Adding attractive features like this means I'll have to keep the room neat. That was not the plan!

Update: I have posted the step-by-step tutorial for this project here.

With so many of my projects I am captivated by the visuals created as I work. Here are a few photos that caught my eye.

Here is a photo of the original work by Liv and Jeff. Thanks for the inspiration!

Photo credit: Liv McMillian

Previous Posts of Interest:

• Branch Overview
• Birch Overview
• Laundry Room Reveal
• Laundry Room Reveal • The Cabinets
• Laundry Room Reveal • Ikea Hack • Kvartal
• Laundry Room Reveal • The Ironing Board solution

©2013AshbeeDesign, Marji Roy

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