Create a DIY home decoration

Upcycle materials or craft something new—like a candle holder, wall art, or plant pot—to personalise your space.

Time:: 60 min
Cost:: low
Difficulty:: moderate
Where:: Indoors
Best:: Solo

When you create a DIY home decoration, the difference between looking deliberate and looking homemade is usually that the second was made first and placed afterwards. Measuring the spot and designing for it, including how it will be fixed to the wall, changes the outcome considerably more than craft skill does.

Why create a DIY home decoration is worth an hour

Scale is what reads as professional. Something slightly too small for a wall looks like an afterthought, while something correctly proportioned looks intentional regardless of how simply it is made. Deciding the fixing method in advance matters for a related practical reason: the mounting is what fails, and retrofitting a hanger to a finished piece rarely works well.

How to create a DIY home decoration step by step

1
Measure the space first
Including the height it will hang at. Scale is what separates deliberate from accidental far more than technique.
2
Mock it up with paper
Cut newspaper to size and tape it up. Ten minutes here prevents building something the wrong size.
3
Choose materials you can actually work
Wood, card, fabric, found objects. Ambitious materials are how projects stall halfway.
4
Plan the fixing before building
Wall type, weight, hanger. Retrofitting a fixing to a finished piece is where these projects fail.
5
Keep the palette tight
Two or three colors drawn from the room. Restraint is what makes handmade look intentional.

Tips to get more out of it

Check what is behind the wall before drilling. Cables and pipes run in predictable places and a detector is cheap.
Match the fixing to the wall type. Plasterboard needs specific anchors and ordinary screws will pull straight out.
Take the mock-up seriously. Most disappointing results are scale errors rather than craft errors.

Ways to mix it up

If drilling is not an option, design something freestanding or use removable adhesive strips within their weight rating. If you want to use what you already own, framing something you have, a map, a piece of fabric, a child's drawing, is often better than making something new.