Add Art To Your Home Without Spending A Fortune

How often have you looked at your bare walls and wished you could do something to make your home more interesting?  But when you’re on a budget, expensive artwork isn’t a high priority.  So what can you do?  Here are some ideas on how to add art on a budget to your home.

There are lots of ways to use your own creativity to adorn your walls.  If your budget has been blown on a house move, wedding, furniture, or other necessities, you may be looking at bare walls and no money to decorate them.  The answer is to get creative and find or make some of your own artwork.

There are many ways to stretch a budget when it comes to decorating a home and one of the easiest is to create your own artwork.  Below are some creative ways to find artwork at budget prices, or no cost at all!

 

 

Frame what’s free

We all get numerous free calendars from companies each year and many of the images presented are beautiful. Other sources of free art are include creative menus, pretty party invitations, a collage of postcards from a trip or even a collection of tickets from an event. Here on the left, we float mounted and framed a collection of Olympic tickets in a deep black frame.  Pieces that are just decorative can be put directly into a frame off the shelf, but those that are more special, certificates for instance, should be mounted and framed using conservation materials.

 

 

 

Frame a bit of nature

You can mount any number of natural items in either a standard or shadowbox style frame. A beautiful arrangement at little or no cost can be made of pressed flowers or leaves, shells you’ve collected on a trip to the shore, interesting pods and seeds, pine cones, dried flowers, or even a freeze-dried corsage.  Here on the right, we framed some flowers from a wedding bouquet, in a deep frame with a hand-finished white/grey washed frame.

Use your camera

Amateur photographers can capture the most interesting images – flowers, houses, interesting buildings, sports equipment, or pretty settings. You can see that the possibilities are endless!  Framed as a collection on the wall like this can look quite amazing!

For a series of photos, frame them in simple, identical frames, with coordinating mounts. When assembled, the photos can be grouped on a large wall, hung along a hallway, or placed on shelves in a bookcase.  Here, there are a series of photos shot over 360 degrees and mounted in the same frame as a collection.

 

Go book shopping

This may sound shocking to some of you who were taught to never deface a book, but you can find wonderful photos and illustrations in books. Subjects could be birds, furniture design, architectural structures, Impressionist era art, landscapes, trains – pretty much anything. Select pictures that will coordinate with your decorating scheme. You can find books with beautiful illustrations at car boot sales, used book stores, or library sales.

 

Creative crafts and collections

If you do needlework, draw, make model airplanes, or have a collection of small items, they can often make a wonderful piece of art. It’s probably best to get a professional to frame objects like these to make sure you don’t damage them. This will provide a great way to display things that mean a lot to you and to show off your talents.  Collections can be of anything, medals, tickets, even spoons like this, which has a black velvet background that really shows off the details on the handles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frame a game

A fun idea for a family room or child’s room is to frame the game board of a favorite game. Position the open game board with some game pieces and dice around the board, add game rules and playing cards.  Here, we framed the contents of an old magic set, together with the box.

 

 

 

 A collage

Select photographs, buttons, pieces of fabric, ribbons, small toys, keys, magazine pictures, menus, or greeting cards to create a collage. You can see that the list could go on forever! Coordinate a theme, colour, or design to create a collage that you can frame. You can make one large collage and some smaller ones to create an interesting arrangement on your wall.  Here, on the right, is a collage of photographs and newspaper cuttings.

You can see that there are countless ways to create artwork for your home. Look around you, both at home or when you’re out. You’re sure to see something wonderful that will be able to use to decorate your walls.  Let us know your ideas for your ‘art on a budget’.