Custom Art - On a Budget

I recently discovered a great way to get custom art for your home on a tight budget. It all started because I wanted vintage botanical prints for our dinning room. Real prints, of course, can cost hundreds of dollars, and I'm a graduate student. So I had to be creative to get the look I wanted for less. I started with Etsy and Art.com. Unfortunately, my options were limited. Despite both sites offering a variety of "vintage" looking prints, I was limited in the sizes of prints both offered. I had a big wall to fill, so I either needed larger prints or many small ones, which automatically boosted the total budget (even at $10 for a small print, if you need 6, that's $60, plus the cost of frames...which can really get up there). So...what to do?

As part of my dissertation I had to purchase royalty free photos. I realized that I could search the photo site for any photo I wanted and print my own prints. Voila! Cheap art! A quick look around showed that photos.com had the cheapest pictures available. I bought a $14.99 package that allows 5 downloads ($3 a picture). (Quick note: the maximum resolution photos.com offers is 300 dpi with a maximum size of 2121 x 1414 pixels. If you want a larger size, you will have to look elsewhere. istockphoto offers bigger photos.) After selecting the botanical prints I wanted, I uploaded the pictures to Mpix. I chose Mpix for two reasons: 1) print and paper quality (real people check your prints to make sure they meet their quality standards) 2) their software told me the maximum size I could print (16X20).  I'm sure you could just as easily use Snapfish or any other printer, but I didn't want to take any risks with quality. I had purchased 16X20 frames with mats which meant I needed a 11X14 print. Each print was $7 (including shipping), which brought my total to $10 a print!

My prints after arriving from Mpix. The quality was excellent!

I snagged the cherry wood frames on sale at Michael's for $22. So when you add in the $10 mat, I paid $42  for each custom botanical print! Of course, smaller sizes, cheaper prints and cheaper frames would bring the total down. The mat was totally optional, but I wanted a matted look. Voila! The look I wanted for hundreds off the custom price.

Some additional ideas (you can do a lot more with the photos): print them on a gallery wrap canvas (with an oil painting effect, this would truly be custom art); print them on matboard and have them framed; print them on a poster; etc....