Wall coverings

Wall of buttons at Lula Cafe (2537 N Kedzie Blvd, 773-489-9554, lulacafe.com)
The two colorful button collages on the walls at Lula Cafe rival the gorgeously plated meals of beet bruschetta and eggs Florentine. Designed by local artist Anders Nilsen, the installations are comprised of about 500 and 1,000 buttons each, featuring imagery from various forms of print media such as coupons, magazines and children’s books. “It ends up being about memory and experience disintegrated over time, nostalgia,” says Nilsen. “But as I’ve gone, it’s less about that and more about form and taking super ephemeral images and making them into a beautiful aesthetic object.” After cutting the pictures into small circles with a die cutter and turning them into buttons at Busy Beaver Button Co., Nilsen simply stuck the extended pins directly into the wall. If you can’t afford to commission Nilsen (pricing starts at $800), create your own version using premade buttons you’ve collected or homemade ones with a store-bought button maker (the EZ Pop Button Maker comes out later this month; $30, at amazon.com) or using Busy Beaver’s services (a minimum order of 50 buttons costs less than $50). You can also adhere images to the ends of needles, which allows for variation in how far each image projects from the wall. Consider sticking the buttons into a panel such as foam core hung from picture-frame hooks so you can move the art from room to room and take it down to clean it.

Milk-glass plates at Ina’s (1235 W Randolph St, 312-226-8227, breakfastqueen.com)
When Ina Pinkney walked into the space where her namesake restaurant now resides, nothing felt right. “I wanted it to feel like you’re going to your favorite aunt’s or grandma’s house who you loved and who loved to cook,” Pinkney says. “So I decided that artwork was inappropriate because it would always be my taste.” After rummaging through the materials leftover in an upstairs room by the previous proprietors—a Greek family that owned the place for 40 years—Pinkney and her friend decided to salvage all the white milk-glass plates they could find. Supplementing that collection with single plates from thrift stores and junk shops, she arranged the plates on hangers by color—celadon, salmon and white—across the walls, using museum tape on the backs for extra security. Mimic Pinkney’s country-style kitchen decor by scavenging for plates at thrift stores and buying plate hangers from Ace Hardware (locations around the city) for about $3 each.

Cardboard box covering at Ping Pong (3322 N Broadway, 773-281-7575, pingpongrestaurant.com)
Henry Chang likes to change the minimalist decor at his Boystown restaurant every so often, and when he recently switched up the look of the bar area he had two things on his mind: the recession and the environment. “So, I came up with cardboard boxes,” he says. “They’re recycled and inexpensive.” Using the insides of unfolded boxes from deliveries the restaurant gets every week, Chang covered the wall behind Ping Pong’s bar with a repeating pattern. While the covering looks like an intricate work of art, Chang insists it’s easy to replicate. You can collect used boxes from grocery stores (although Chang says the look works best when using the same type of box; you can buy a pack of five at staples.com for $10), unfold them and lay out a few on the floor while you figure out how to display them in a pattern by interweaving the boxes’ flaps. Then tack each box using small nails one at a time to your wall.

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