When I finally upgraded to a flat screen TV it forced me to buy a new entertainment center. And when buying a new entertainment center it forced me to re-do my decorations. It’s always a can of worms isn’t it? I ended up expanding from a 2-shelf corner unit, to a dual glass cabinet unit with a shelf bridge between them. The unit all together spanned an entire wall. It is massive.

The unit, however, did not go to the ceiling – which were 9ft high. So I had this large blank space above the unit that begged for something. I had seen my friend and décor inspiration had put canvas prints of her son on top of her entertainment center, taking up that vertical space and loved the idea. But I don’t have kids, other than my cats, and I didn’t know what to put up there.

Thinking long and hard I decided I wanted whatever it was to be inspiring. I decided to go with places I haven’t been yet, but wanted to go to. A daily reminder that there’s more out there that I want to do and see. My thought was that I would put silhouettes of the locations in frames and after I had been to that place I would replace the silhouette with an actual photo from my trip there.

To create the silhouettes I located artwork of each of the cities I wanted to go to online. I added the city name in a font that seemed in line with the style of that city. And I printed them onto brown craft-like paper. I put them into frames with mats from Ikea and placed them across the top of the unit.

The only problem was they were a little dark and hard to see. And I loved them and wanted them to be a focal point. So one day when I was home alone with nothing to do I decided to take another pass at this project. I went to Ikea and bought small spotlights, one for each of the frames.

The spotlights actually are plastic and had a clamp on them. I simply removed the clamp from the light and then used the connector to attach the light to the top of the entertainment center. I drilled a large round hole in the top of the entertainment center, only deep enough to fit the connector of the light into. Then pressed the light into the hole. Using black duct tape, I taped over the bracket to hold the light in place, pointing it at the frame.

I dropped the wires behind the entertainment unit and plugged them in and voila! The frames looked a little bare up there by themselves, so I also bought small plant holders from Ikea that were woven leaves and added fake plants and put one in between each picture frame.

So far I have been to three of the 5 destinations that I had put up. Maybe it’s time to put in some new ones. I ended up not putting in the photo of the real location after traveling as I didn’t like the look of one photo vs. the silhouettes and I honestly just really like the silhouettes.

My next trip isn’t even represented up there, neither is my last one…