I can pack, move and unpack in record time. My new home is usually completely unpacked and organized the day after I move in. I can't stand the clutter and unsettled feeling. One thing I am not good at? Decorating my apartment, specifically my walls. My walls tend to look sad and bare until I start packing everything up again. (You see, lately I've been moving once a year.) 

Now I'm stuck in this apartment for a while, unless, god forbid, something should go wrong. So two months into my new life in Los Angeles my walls are still very bare and very sad. I scoured IKEA for some prints, but I didn't find anything that felt very "me" (for less than $60.) I've added so many prints to my list on Etsy, but after paying for and shipping all of it, well, I'd have less money to spend on wine. Obviously you see what my priorities are.

Then I got an idea. I remembered seeing a cute crafty project pop up in my Google Reader a few weeks ago. Someone created butterflies out of magazine pages and used them to decorate her walls. I wish I could remember the post so I could give her credit!

I started by grabbing past copies of Real Simple and Wired (my two loves) and tore out pages that I liked. Once I had a pile of about 50 pages, I cut out a stencil of a butterfly that I could trace on each one. It's time consuming, but totally worth it.

Once the butterflies are all cut out, first I do a happy dance. What? Those scissors get hard to hold after a while! I thought about doing different sizes, but I got lazy and only drew one stencil. Now it's time to place them throughout the apartment!

So there you go! One of my favorite things about the butterflies, besides adding some color to my walls, is that they are tiny pieces of a bigger picture. Sometimes I include part of an article on them or even an advertisement. There's a lot of variety!

Happy decorating!