Nursery Wall Art on a Budget

We rent our apartment, therefore we cannot paint or wallpaper our apartment. But when a women is nesting, Lord knows, she wants to DECORATE! I want a cute nursery, but don't have much money or much liberty living in a rental. My simple solution was to add some wall art. I went down to my local thrift store and found some framed photographs from the 1980's (and they looked like it too!). But the frames worked and the mattes were good. I found 3 matching frames for $8.00.                 

The frames taken apart and already spray painted. If the lovely clerk from the thrift store happens to come across this... I apologize for destroying the art work. (The clerk was horrified that I would throw out the picture and reuse the frames... but what are you gonna do?!)

...As a brief aside, my church just opened its thrift store, City Thrift in Lodi, CA. All profits from store go to feeding those in need as well as into our women and children home and young men home in the process of being built. I say this to say that if you are in the area, consider taking your donations and doing your shopping at City Thrift, and, if not, consider supporting a local non-profit thrift store that gives back to your community. And, as an added bonus, they are often cheaper.

Okay, so back to the project...

I found a cute farmer boy fabric at Walmart to go with my farm-themed nursery. The print was just the right size for my frames (something to keep in mind should you choose to put fabric in your frames.) Another option I considered was using the wallpaper border from the nursery set I fell in love with. You might not be able to put wallpaper on the walls in your apartment, but who says you can't put it in a picture frame?!

Finding frames and finding what I wanted to put in them was the biggest part of the battle. Once you do that you are ready to tackle the project!

Supplies:

• frames with mattes
• fabric, wallpaper, or picture
• spray paint for frames
• acrylic paint for mattes (I recommend against using "Apple Barrel" brand for this project. While cheap, they seem more "watery" to me. Not best when painting paper product like a matte. I find Folk Art or Delta brands work best)
• small sponge brush
• Disposable pallette paper (or for the "non-painters" like me, wax paper does the trick)
• Cup with water
• Work surface and something to paint on... i.e. keep your table paint free. (I used paper towels, but paper towels are capable of bleeding, so if you are super worried... try wax paper.)
• double sided tape or photo splits
• scissors

Got my supplies together. Notice the the sun-fading on the matte. Super old, but it totally still worked!

Step 1: Take apart frames and spray paint the frame.



Step 2: Paint your matte(s). You will not want to get too much water on your sponge as these are paper product. It should "warp" just a bit. But as the paint dries, the matte will go back to its original flatness.

Be sure to paint the same direction... could just be my own "particularness" but I think it looks better, not to mention pro.

Notice how my brush strokes all run in the same direction, even around the corner.

Allow the paint to dry completely. It really depends on how many coats you put on, but this should only take a couple hours.

My very sophicated and high-tech acryllic paint drying station.

Step 3: Cut out fabric and attach to matte (the bottom matte if using two or more). To attach, I used photo splits (double sided tape works the same) and placed them on the back side of the matte close to the inner corners. Four did the trick for the smaller frames and six worked for the larger frame. Lay your fabric section on a flat surface and press your matte sticky side down onto the fabric exactly as you want it to appear in your frame.

Step 4: Put the pictures back together in their frames (minus the old picture, of course).

All done!

My favorite picture. Love that I am having a baby boy!

Total Cost:

• Frames: $8
• 1/2 yd. of fabric: $1.50
• 2 acryllic paint colors: $3
• Paint sponge brush: $1
• Spray Paint: $3

I had everything else on hand. So my grand total was: $16.50 for 3 double-matted frames. Pretty sure buying some baby wall art would have cost me at least $40 at the cheapest of stores and I managed to get some color into my baby's room for less than a gallon of paint. Sa-WEET!