A More Contemporary Decor Idea...

Earlier, I demonstrated a way to celebrate one of my Ellis Island/20th century immigrant using his certificate of citizenship, ship's manifest from his voyage, and a photograph of the ship on which he arrived.

Today, I will bump up the degree of difficulty and creativity to make something celebrating this same man but which results in a more contemporary decor look.

Once again, I used the citizenship certificate of my great grandfather, Jan Paruch.

This time however, I used a photo editor to remove the wrinkles and old lines which would be more noticeable and less appropriate for this purpose.  Then, I in effect, made 9 copies of the certificate from a very high resolution scan each of which was 8.5" x 11" the same size as the whole original.  For each copy, however, I cropped the image to only use 1/9th of the overall image each one of a 3x3 subsection of the whole.  One of these images looks so:

Now the reason this works is because the original document was of such high resolution (including the tiny photo of my great grandfather attached to it!) coupled with access to a high resolution scan that loses near nothing of the original.

The next steps include trimming the image to an 8x10 size and gluing it to some gesso board (masonite).  Then, I glued a thicker gesso board block of greater thickness but much smaller in width and height, to the back to the board so that when I hung it on the wall, the panel with the image would not be flush with the wall but rather "floating" out from the wall creating a shadow and depth.

Finally, I made a faux picture frame out of standard wood trim I found at the hardware store and some satin black paint and some wood glue.  To mount it on the wall, I found S shaped brackets that are used for some legimate purpose I presume and used glue to adhere them to the frame.

And because this was a panel display that requires precise placement of each panel to make a whole, I mounted all of these panels and the frame using Velcro tape adhesive which allows for adjustment of the panel position.

And voila, a more contemporary styled display for a more modern look despite the less than contemporary subject.  I placed this one over my bar in the foyer and I think you can see the scale of the project from the bottles of liquor below it.  It may be harder to see in a picture but the frame and panels are all an inch away from the wall.

What do you think?