Art - on the cheap

This world is a scary place to be right now. The economy gives me daily anxiety attacks. The Hubby is self-employed. As anyone who has dealt with self-employment knows, it can be financially... let's just say... tricky. And in financially insecure times, things can get downright frightening. So why did I share all this with you? Only because being on a tight budget doesn't mean we can't make our homes beautiful places to be.

So today, I'm sharing a couple of ideas of how to create art - on the cheap!

Here's a fun idea. Not too long ago, Kim at Today's Creative Blog shared a link to this blog, who in turn gives plenty of links to design freebies! YEEHAW!!! So I clicked around for a while and found some great monograms. I. HEART. MONOGRAMS! Since they were copyright free, and free-of-charge, I printed one out and framed it up. Now, I have a disclaimer to make. The Hubby is both a home improvement contractor AND a professional photographer so we have more than our fair share of frames just laying around. All I had to do was go into our storage and grab a frame. I realize most people don't have that luxury. But thrift stores are a great source for frames (look beyond the painted velvet picture at the frame it is in) or you can pick up cheap frames at stores like Walmart. That said, here's the finished project. I love black & white. (Those are two's feet in the photo - he always used to cross them like that when he was a baby - too cute!)

Some of you may remember this idea from the Princess' room. An inexpensive shadow box frame ( I did NOT have that laying around the house) and some Barbie clothes. I bought these new, but you can certainly find some funky old ones at the thrift store, and the vintage ones look awesome! (Do you like my shadow in the plexiglass?)

This one may seem silly, but it looks great. This photo was actually taken with my old point and shoot digital camera! (Proof that you don't need a nice SLR to do this project!) It's one of the Hubby's old footballs against our chocolate brown wall. You can have photos enlarged fairly cheaply now-a-days...and this would look awesome in little sports lover's room!

Frame a collection of stuff you already have. Like my buttons. Simple. Easy. And a real statement about the things you love!

Get imaginative! As I said to my Mom in a conversation we had on the phone yesterday, "just because times are scary doesn't mean we have to abandon our dreams." Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth are surprisingly "profound". ;-)