enJOY it

I'm so excited to be partnering with Canon USA for the next few months to bring you some awesome DIY photo projects using their range of printers. When this opportunity first came up (LAST JANUARY!) I knew that when I received my Canon PIXMA iP8720 Printer (which is a large format that prints up to 13×19), I would be using it to create killer palm tree art for our bathroom.

This project is the opposite of a traditional framing project in that I started with the frames and then printed photos to fill them. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to thrift random frames that "went together" without being matchy-matchy.

Over the course of a few weeks, I pulled old frames from our garage and visited our local thrift stores and bought them out of wood, white or gold frames in various sizes. My original plan was to fill just one wall, but I kept finding frames (and photos) and so I kept going around the whole bathroom.

I had the large format printer and tons of wall space to work with so big frames were awesome. I shopped the normal photo frame section and the framed art section to find my frames. (You can see in the image above an example where I removed the existing art and dark mats and replaced it with a 12×12 photo.)

Over the years, I have taken quite a palm tree photo collection. Palm trees are special to me and Paul. At our wedding we danced to Rise Against's Swing Life Away and our favorite line is "we'll settle down where palm trees grow." Since before we started dating our goal was always to get to San Diego long-term and while that may change, we're pretty thrilled to be here now.

That very top left photo is the first photo we ever took in front of a palm tree the summer before I moved to Maryland. That exact photo hung in our Maryland bedroom and I found it while changing up some of my old frames.

These photos were taken all over the place. In San Diego, of course, but also Hawaii, Bora Bora, Oxnard and Palm Springs – all places we have lived or visited together over the past eight years of dating. The best part is I can look at ANY photo and tell you instantly where it was taken.

I printed all of my photos at home on the PIXMA iP8720. The best part of working with the large format printer (by far!) is that I could custom print the most random of dimensions (16×9.5 for example) to fit my gathered frames.

To get the wall placement right, I used paper templates to "map out" where my frames would go. It helped to work from the ceiling down. I hung the heavy and low to the ground frames with Command picture hanging strips (they are super strong and work well!). I found the best way to get things straight was to pick one big frame and use a level on that then work out from it, lining each frame up as I went.

I am thrilled with the print quality (and that I didn't even have to replace the ink cartridges to get all of these images!) and LOVE how this bathroom turned out.

It's totally over the top and exactly how I wanted it to look x 100. It took forever (much longer than anticipated) and I don't care to ever shop for a used frame again but man, was it worth it.

This post is sponsored by Canon USA. Project idea, opinions, words and photos are all my own.