Ideas for Cheap Wall Art?

This isn’t really a handmade gift idea, since it’s for me…but does anyone have a creative idea for cheap wall art? I recently painted my bedroom and the walls are looking kind of bare. I have a few framed family photos and a large decorative mirror, but it seems to need something else in that space.

Almost anything can be turned into wall art.  It sort of depends on the style of your bedroom.  Antique plates are great in my bedroom because it is Victorian.  I have seen a interior designed stick painted egg cartons up on the wall for a modern look.  Because of the texture and dimension changes it looked pretty cool.  Stained glass windows, magazine covers, old records or album covers….just sort of depends on what you like.
Or do some stenciling and create a view.

Some cool things I’ve seen:

* Find a great piece of fabric with a bold print. Use it to cover a stretched canvas and hang on the wall

* Paint a canvas with a solid color. Wanna go wild? put a stripe in another color across it.

* Frame a “collection”. I have mounted coins, keys and other small objects on cardboard and framed them for instant art.

*Look for small rugs you can hang like tapestries.

* Mirrors are great “wall art” - find a fabulous mirror (it can be new or old - check ebay for some great deals) and put a big mirror in a cool frame on the wall. Side benefit is this makes the room look bigger.

* Wall sconces or mini shelves. Mount wall sconces or a grouping of those little wall shelves (the individual ones for curios) with pictures or decorative objects on them.

As far as mirrors go, an easy and very economical option is to buy a long vertical mirror, the kind that you’d hang on the back of a door, and turn it horizontally. We wanted to put a large horizontal mirror in our home and looked everywhere until we realized that we could just flip a long one. It takes up a lot of space and looks great with small accent sconces on each side.

All very good ideas, except the egg cartons on the wall is a bit “out there” for my taste. Thanks so much for your input! Now it’s time to come up with something affordable and non-breakable. (My son has a nasty habit of slamming doors and knocking stuff off my walls.)

I saw some neat wall art in a magazine once. You just pick out three pieces of colorful craft paper, the thick kind that won’t bleed through glue, and hot glue them either to the top of three separate canvasses or wood frames. Space them out by about a foot and hang them on your wall. With so many choices of pretty paper for scrapbooking, you’re bound to find something that will go with your decor. It would even be easy to switch this out every few months based on the season.

A friend of mine painted some cool stuff on her walls—and she did it with an old projector (like the kind they used to use in school). If you ask around local schools or churches, I bet you can find one. Then you just trace the outline of something from a book or picture to the transparency and the projector puts it on the wall for you. You trace it and paint it in. I was amazed at how professional her wall art looked.

Plus, if you hate it… you just paint over it!

I decided once that I wanted to give my bedroom a little Indian flair. I found these great greeting cards (no words) that had Indian artwork on them and they became my inspiration. I found 12x12 inch scrapbooking paper to use as a background. I layered each card on a gold doily, layered that on the scrapbook paper and mounted them in album cover frames that I found at my local Michaels craft store. Altogether they cost about $12.00 dollars each, but they looked fantastic. I was trying to capture a little of the romance of India, but you could use a card with any theme you like for inspiration. Just imagine what you could do if you started with a lighthouse card or something floral? The possibilities are endless.

If you are a music lover, find some old vinyl records at a used music store. Put them on top of an upside down large oven-safe bowl and place in the oven at a very low temperature for only about 10-20 seconds. ***You MUST supervise this closely!***

Once the records are warm, the sides will fall down the upside down bowl. Take it out of the oven at this point, so you do not melt the record too much. Allow it to cool before hanging it. You can hang these 3D records “as is” in your home if they are artists you enjoy or you can cut out the middle part and use it as a retro photo frame.

My sister and I found this idea in a woman’s magazine when we were about 10 and used my parents old vinyls, which they were *not* pleased about when they found out!! Ooops!

Hi Amy,

Boy does that project bring back memories of my childhood. My best friend and I did that at her house one afternoon when we were bored and looking for something to do. The funny thing (or not so funny thing as it turned out) was that Lori selected a few of her older sister’s albums to make our bowls from. Eva hit the roof when she realized what we had done. The bowls were cool, but I never saw them again after that day, lol.

Has anyone tried those word decals that can be put directly on walls, like these here? I’ve seen them often in stores but don’t know anyone who has used them. They look nice, but I can’t imagine liking a particular phrase enough that I’d want to see it everyday.

Holly,

I actually have decals in several rooms in my house, although I made mine using the Cricut scrapbook die cut machine and the special vinyl they sell. I have a writing quote in my office, stars and my son’s name in his room, and a row of butterflies in the bedroom. If you don’t see a premade phrase you like, maybe you can purchase the vinyl (it’s about $8 a pack at Hobby Lobby) and borrow a machine from a scrapbooker.

My husband is a classic car enthusiast. We have a room with a pool table in it, and two of the pieces of “art” in the room are advertisements from old magazines for cars that he loves. We found the old magazines at a flea market (I think they were old Popular Mechanics issues) and framed the pictures in inexpensive frames purchased from a department store. They are very attractive and get a lot of positive comments from visitors.

In the back to school section at Target, they have some neat wall decals called Art a Peel. They had several designs like trees, mulitcolored dots, and letters. There was also a decal that looked like a picture frame but the inside is a dry erase board. That would work well in a kitchen or near a front door to post messages for
family members.