$1 DIY "Vintage" Art

Hi guys! Happy Friday! 

This is a picture of our new above-the-bed arrangement. I am just in love with sailboat sketch to the right. It's vintage and given to us by my father-in-law. I wanted to incorporate it with our super pricy headboard (NOT!)  I'm sorry. I watched Wayne's World last night. Our headboard (which is a Cal King size, by the way) you can see peeking in at the bottom is one I whipped up using burlap and poster board, and cost a whopping $10. You can find the tutorial here. 

Anyhoo. I wanted to incorporate that sketch and create a sort of rustic/beachy/ vintage collection of prints. Enter THE GRAPHICS FAIRY. If you do not know who she is - shame on you. She's got an EXTENSIVE collection of vintage clip-art taken from all kinds of stuff that she provides for FREE. That's right. FREE.  

Margaret likes free. 

I could have spent hours poking around, but I finally settled on these: 

I wanted them to look like vintage scientific prints, so I added their names and a figure number using the 'ol computer. I used Mac Pages, but I bet you can do it in paint or word. 

A Gryphaea is apparently an extinct type of oyster, if this type of thing is important to you. I just printed them off using regular printer paper (note: if you've got a heavier stock around, use it, cause next we're going to... ) 

Tea stain! 

Just fill a long, shallow dish ( like a casserole) with room temperature tea. Easy like Sunday morning. Just try to make it even and don't leave it in for too long or else it will tear when you try to remove it. Really just a minute or two at most. 

For the framing, I just modified two frames I got at the dollar store for- you guessed it- a dollar each! The brown one I sanded and did a coat of watered down white acrylic paint and for the gray frame ( sorry, I don't have a before picture) started out blonde unfinished wood, like you would find in a craft store. I just painted it up with some gray acrylic paint. So I got some great personalized art for a grand total of $1 each! Can't beat that.

And here's Cali making her first blog appearance! 

Enter: Another gratuitous picture of our pup. She's a ham, this one.

Happy Friday!
xo,