Photography |

New Gallery Wall

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Amy

My plan has been to create a Gallery Wall in my foyer since I first saw this open staircase in our new home. After all, what kind of home blogger would I be without a gallery wall? Just throw in some chevron, some chalk paint and some drop cloth curtains and my home is complete, right? But I digress….

Anyway! We have a large foyer, and these high white walls needed something, well, interesting on them. Here is a before picture from the holidays, you can see the boring white walls going up the stairs.

I have been collecting photos, frames and ideas over the last few months, but really got motivated when we were offered a sample photo canvas from Photo-Canvas.com, which specializes in photo to canvas prints. I had already edited and saved my favorite picture of my kids from vacation last year intending to get it printed, so I sent it over and couldn’t wait to see how it would look on canvas.

Canvas from Photo-Canvas.com

I couldn’t have been more thrilled when it arrived. I have ordered pictures printed on canvas from other vendors before, so my expectations were that it would be grainy at such a large size. The Photo-Canvas came out perfectly, we were so impressed with the quality and the crispness of the print, even in black and white. And, the shipping was lightening fast–even though they are in London with the Olympics going on!

I just had to get all the other photos and decor up on the wall once the canvas arrived.

{While I am at it, see the fabulous picture of my daughter on the right? That was done by my talented friend Michelle of LuMa images, see more of her work HERE, and check out the adorable butterfly birthday party where she snapped it}.

Here is the whole wall, its partially done for now, and I will be adding pictures to fill it up. I mixed in some Pinterest inspired date artwork and my Ballard Designs “B”, but I have quite a bit of space to work so its certainly going to take awhile to finish it off.

Thanks for stopping by!

{While I was provided a complimentary photo canvas from photo-canvas.com, the opinions in this post are purely my own}

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Posted in Home Inspiration, Projects & Printables, Real Spaces, Reviews | Tagged black and white, foyer, gallery wall, hallway, home decor, photo canvas, photography | 3 Comments

Pretending to be Supermodels…

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Amy

Have you noticed our new look? Thanks to some amazing photography of the three of us by Jessica Oatman, we have a new Blog header and have freshened up our “About Us” page.

We had such a great time working with Jessica. She really listened to our ideas, and spent time talking about what we hoped for and looking at the inspiration shots we had gathered. OK, actually Terry was the Creative Director on our end, Christy and I just stood where we were told, and smiled through the cold!

Our goal was to get some fun shots that captured our personalities, that would feel fresh and would work within the space limitations of our blog pages.

Our inspiration for a large part of our shoot was the Mad Men era, in fact Christy and Terry both were able to wear vintage dresses (Christy from her mother and Terry from her Grandmother). These were the most fun shots to do.

We also took some dressed up shots as all three of us love any reason to get all ‘glammed up’.

Finally, we did a whole mess of outside casual shots and individual headshots.

And we did all this in a 2 hour window—including wardrobe/hair/jewelry changes. Unfortunately, the hotel where we stayed and held the shoot at was not very accommodating of extending our check-out time, and so we had to rush through much of the pictures to wrap up and race out of there by noon. Jessica was super-efficient and had some great suggestions for what have become some of our favorite pictures.

And, did we mention it was freezing with rain threatening that day? I don’t know how supermodels do it!

Thanks Jessica, we look forward to working with you again! You can read more about Jessica (her story is incredible) on her Blog here.

Thanks for stopping by~

Linking up to~

Inspiration Friday at The Picket Fence

Posted in General & About Us | Tagged about us, blog, blog photos, girls, photo shoot, photography, shopping, Spring | 1 Comment

Exciting Happenings at Magnolia Lane

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Amy

Happy Monday everyone!

The three of us are just back from a fabulous weekend at a top secret location (kidding) where we had a much needed “Blog Planning Weekend.”

So basically, Christy, Terry and I shopped some and talked, brainstormed and planned a lot about all that we hope for our little 11 Magnolia Lane corner of the web/blog world.

If you are new to 11 Magnolia Lane or haven’t read our ABOUT US page–the three of us are friends who blog here on the same site but live in different parts of the country. It’s a rare treat to be in the same place together. This blog is our fun place to share all our ideas and inspirations and we have a ball doing it.

So, I have to start with a small administrative detail before we move on to all the fun things we came up with that will soon be happening here. Thanks to Google discontinuing “Google Friend Connect” (which is just one way to stay in tune with all of the great blogs out there) we realized we are no longer showing up in the Blogger “Dashboard.” {ARGH!}

If you use Blogger Dashboard or Google Reader to read blogs (though I recommend you switch to Linky Tools HERE if you do), but if want to continue to read Magnolia Lane via your Blogger Dashboard here is what you will need to do.

I only know this because it worked for me when my own blog disappeared from my own reading list! I promise it takes all of 2 seconds.

Simply click on “ADD BLOG” at the top left under “Reading List” like so:

Just click the button to "ADD"

Then enter this text (just copy this URL as is):

http://www.11magnolialane.com/

in the next screen that appears:

Click “follow” and we should re-appear in your reading list. I am not sure why this happened to us when other blogs still appear in my list, but obviously we HATE to lose our readers so please take 2 seconds to do this.

You can also follow us on Facebook HERE and subscribe by email or by Linky on the right side of the Blog.

We are also thrilled to announce we have been accepted into the BlogHer network, which should be obvious by the new look of our sidebar and top header.

We made lots of plans for upcoming series and projects this weekend. We plan to launch a DIY link party in April and have several new food/entertaining and DIY series in the works.

Of course, the whole weekend was not “all work”…Here are Christy & Terry jewelry shopping at Kate Spade.

We also spent Sunday in a photo session with Jessica Oatman of Jessica Oatman Photography. We had a total blast with Jessica and can’t wait to reveal some new pictures of the three of us.

Here is Terry blogging --or maybe "pinning"? --while waiting for the photoshoot to begin

We can’t wait to post more about our weekend and photoshoot!

In the meantime, PLEASE continue to follow us either via the Google Reader Button as above or via Linky. If you have any trouble (or as always, thoughts/feedback/suggestions) please leave us a comment below.

XO,