Frogs on the Wall

A while back, I reorganized my laundry room, which felt wonderful, and added a few pieces of art to warm up the boring, white walls:

But there was this skinny, horizontal strip above the window that bothered me. Too short for normal framed artwork and too shallow to support a shelf, it just sat there, looking blah:

A few days ago, I found the solution in a magazine. (Sorry I can't find the article!) First, I wiped off the dusty trim above the jalousie window. Euwww!

And then I hammered a few nails into the wall and hung my collection of flower frogs:

Most frogs just slip right onto a long nail with a head:

But a few of them have holes that don't allow them to lie flat against the wall:

So, for those, I used a short piece of braided wire--the kind used to hang framed pictures:

I made a loop by passing the wire through the frog's holes and twisting it tightly over itself:

When I want to use a frog, I simply lift it off its nail. (To prevent the wire loops from scratching the inside of a flower vase, I just place a folded-over piece of plastic wrap below the frog. It doesn't show through the water.)

As a final touch, I cut some one-inch pieces off some spongy, two-sided sticky tape...

...and pressed them onto a vintage yard stick from a dear, departed nursery that used to be in our area:

Be sure to peel the protective backing off just one side of the sticky tape and then press it down onto your object. Once it's stuck on the object, then peel off the other piece of backing. Otherwise, you'll be trying to peel tape off your fingers!:

I pressed the yardstick onto the wall just above the window frame:

And there you have it. Functional objects, simply displayed, that add a quirky and unique touch to a neglected bit of wall space:

I love the way it turned out:

The hardest thing about this little project was giving myself permission to hammer nails into the wall. How silly! Who am I "saving" the wall for? I'm not moving any decade soon!

I hereby give you permission to do the same.