…I have figured out how to get great art for my house, for super cheap.
Now, admittedly, this idea is not an original. I have rather poached it from various interior design blogs I read (most of which you can find links to in the sidebar). But it is INGENIOUS and I don’t know why I didn’t conceive of it sooner.
I have read a lot about DIY art, things like framing pretty postcards, special items, even sheets of plain ol’ colored paper can be effective when executed properly. I also know that many artists have books written about them that often also feature a lot of their work.
I knew I wanted to do an art wall/grouping of some kind in the corner behind the couch in our living room, but B and I struggled for months to come to a compromise on how we would achieve such a thing while also blending our individual tastes effectively (B leans toward the minimalist, I have been known to get a bit crazy at times with my love of eccentric furnishings). B was insistent that the frames on all the pieces included be uniform, while I would have been perfectly happy with a mish-mash of various frame sizes and types. In the end, B got his wish.
We ventured to Barnes and Noble one night in search of a book by any artist we love that we could dissect to gather art to frame for the wall. The one stipulation: the art had to be full of bold colors because there is a lot of brown and neutral going on in our living room. We needed something to spice things up a bit. By happy coincidence, we stumbled upon a book of Van Gogh’s work (one of our favorites and one we had actually discussed for this space) in the perfectly almost-standard size of 8.5 x 11. And since each of the prints had a significant amount of white space around them, we figured they would easily work in 8 x 10 frames. The colors of the prints were spot-on and vibrant to boot! Winning!!
Next step: order the frames. I love West Elm, and to my complete delight I discovered their gallery frames were on sale, which I love because of the simple, classic lines and built-in matting. So I snatched up four of them in my online shopping cart. We chose four prints from the book that worked with the color scheme of the room and the natural theme of our house. We cut them out in seconds with a box cutter, popped them in the frames when they arrived a few days later, and threw them up on the wall! (And by throw, I mean we painstakingly mapped out the placement using paper first and adjusted for about an hour after we actually got them up.)
So here are a couple final shots:
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And here’s the cost breakdown:
- Van Gogh book from Barnes and Noble: $20
- Four 14 x 17 gallery frames from West Elm (which hold 8 x10 art): $23/each
- Total cost: ~ $112
That is FAR less than it would cost to buy a single Van Gogh print and have it framed, so I feel like we’ve really uncovered something here. And I’m so in love with this method that I recently purchased another book featuring the art of David Weidman (if you don’t know him, look him up and be blown away by his totally amazing, retro work). So look forward to an update on what we do with that coming soon.
