Large DIY Artwork Tutorial

I have this issue in my house.  The walls are bare.  I mean barren.  It’s kind of sad.

Wait, I take that back.  I actually have a lot of things hung in clusters on my walls in my kids rooms, the loft, the hallways, but my living room lacked the warmth that art can bring.  And I’m a little cheap.  I will spend on the right things (if I can) but I usually immediately regret the purchase and it gets returned.

And art is a committment in most cases.  It’s not something we want to change all the time, we hope to love it, and if it brings discussion, I say even better!  I’ve been looking for a large piece of artwork for my entry for I can’t even remember how long.  I’ve looked for everything and everywhere.

L I T E R A L L Y.

And I needed something pretty big.  Or at least that’s what I wanted and I wasn’t finding anything that was fitting my criteria.

My new thing for birthdays is to print out a huge photo of the birthday boy or girl so when I did this for Olive’s recent birthday it hit me… Why not do something like that as a more permanent piece?!

I knew I wanted landscape or something that didn’t include people and something a little abstract in a way so the hunt was on for a photo that would work.

Enter my recent purge of old gross books.  Sometimes I buy old hardback books for the look of having a ton of books stacked somewhere.  They don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be the right color or have a really cool cover.  Yes, that’s right.  I judge books by their covers.  But I had grabbed this really cool book about Hawaii one time and the cover was green.  I swear I never looked in it before I decided it was time to let it go because the cover had a huge stain on it.  But when I opened it there were some really amazing arial shots of the islands.  So I tore out like 4 of them, and gave the book to goodwill {again}.  So I snapped a photo of the photo and sent it in to Staples.

*I looked all over to find out if the photos were all by the same person and couldn’t tell from the book.

I’m so happy with how it turned out and here’s how you can do it too!

AND it’s actually still hanging like 3 weeks later since this tutorial has taken me forever!

What you’ll need:

-An engineer print of your favorite photo *I’d probably stay away from black and white as it might yellow with the mod podge

-Mod Podge

-Piece of fairly light and thing wood for backing cut to size — In this case, that was 36×36

-Trim – 2 pieces of 1×2 cut to size — I had 2 cut to 34in and 2 to 36in

-Paint Brushes

-Stain or paint for trim pieces

-Staple Gun

-Wood Glue

-Hanging or Mounting hardware

-P A T I E N C E

First, find a large space to tackle this process.  I started in my entry because it was open but moved to the kitchen.

Then dump half of the Mod Podge all over the wood and use one paint brush to move it around fairly evenly.

There were wrinkles in mine and I tried my best to get them out but it just didn’t work.  You do want to make sure to be extra careful because in the end you are working with wet paper which tears easily.  I did have a corner or two that tore, but I knew I’d be covering those with the frame so I didn’t worry too much. Plus, I thought the wrinkles added a little extra character.

*If you rip it, it’s only about $10 to print another one so not the end of the world.

Then you will want to pour the rest of the mod podge over the top and paint it all over to make sure all is covered for a consistent gloss.

I also took my hand over it a few times to smooth all of it out as much as possible.

Let that dry for a couple days.

I did watch the wood warp a bit but it ended up coming back to flat.  If I were to do it again, I’d make sure to lay it flat on the floor the entire time while drying.

Now it’s time to paint the trim!

I was trying to stay as on budget as possible so I ran out to the garage to see what we had.

I think these mini stain cans only run about $5-6 anyways, so not a huge investment.

I tried them all on the wood, but ended up liking the paint best with the photo.  I had originally wanted a natural wood look, but the paint looked better and helped the photo pop.

Once they were all painted, I laid the pieces of the frame together as they would around the photo.  Then I took my staple gun and put two staples in each corner for a pretty simple look.

Then I thought I could just staple the frame

But that didn’t work out so well…

The staples wouldn’t go all the way through and it fell off!

So I resorted to the wood glue…

I just did a small bit around the edge where the frame would be placed.

Then I added a little extra weight…

Hahaha

And we used the following pieces to hang the artwork!

And that’s all!  It really wasn’t that hard and I could have finished it in a weekend, but things just got in the way!

But here’s the entry before…

(seriously lacking)

And here it is after!

And I think what I love most about it besides it’s size and affordability is the fact that I am pretty sure it’ll look great on any color wall!