You just moved in to your first adult apartment, your first single-family home with a real backyard, your fresh start after retirement or some other life change – and you need to decorate, but funds are scarce. When the seminal moments in our lives leave us cash-strapped, cheap canvas prints become our design salvation.
The art on your walls is, after all, more than just clutter: It defines our spaces and brightens our lives. Nothing makes a tiny shoebox apartment in the city feel like a home than some bright pictures on the walls, and nothing warms up an under-furnished new house than canvas prints. But if you walk into a store to buy some wall art, you quickly get sticker shock. How you can get the design power of canvas without taking out a second mortgage? Here are some quick-and-dirty ideas for cheap canvas prints.
Cheap Canvas Prints Idea: Sneak a Pic
So, you’re in one of those home decorating stores and you’ve found a large piece of art you love – but it’s incredibly expensive. It’s perfect for your wall but you simply can’t afford it. Of course, once you see the perfect thing for your wall it’s difficult to imagine anything else in that spot, so here’s our suggestion: Wait for the staff to wander off, take out your smartphone, and snap a quick picture.
Set your camera settings as high as they will go and take several shots using different settings. Get in close and crop out as much of the frame and other parts of the store as possible. As long as you don’t sell the image in some way or use it in your business, there’s nothing wrong with this – and you get to have the perfect image on your walls!
Replication
If you’re a bit more artistic, you can alternatively use that perfect but expensive piece of art as inspiration. Take a quick pic just for reference, then head out into the world and look for scenes that are similar. You can either travel around looking for a real-life scene in the same vein and colour palette, or go home and approximate it using materials at hand.
If it’s a still-life, for example, you can gather the same objects and arrange them carefully against a background, then try to approximate the angle and focus of the original. What you wind up with may not be a perfect duplicate of the original but the differences will be representative of your eye and your design sense, making the resulting pieces even more perfect for your space.
Add a Frame
Often what makes us think a piece of art in a store is powerful is the frame and not necessarily the actual canvas inside it. Frames can be cheap, and yes, your prints made from your photos can be framed. Taking your own personal photography and framing it can elevate it from simple photos to the status of art – all with the addition of a carefully-chosen frame.
Beauty has no price tag, and one of the main attractions of art pieces for your walls is the power they convey to a room despite their affordability. When you’ve figured out how to game the system and decorate your walls for cheap, click here and we’d be happy to provide the inexpensive beauty you need.
