Fill Your Home With Art You Actually Love With These Tips And Tricks

Big box retailers now sell quieter and more considered framed wall art, and shoppers give these affordable pieces great reviews. Antique- and vintage-inspired prints often showcase Old Master-like still lifes, usually of bowls of fruit or flowers in a vase, or prints that look like hand-drawn figural sketches dashed out in the Modernist style. That's definitely expecting more and paying less down the home aisles. For those who want to display art in their home that's more like the real thing, that's possible thanks to open-access art collections from some of the world's most significant museums and galleries. You can fill your home with art you actually love, covering every nook and cranny, with a few easy tips and tricks.

Many works are now available for download from institutions such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (492,000 pieces) and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. (4.9 million pieces). These are works now in the public domain, and therefore available for free download and unrestricted use. For art lovers (or those who want to elevate their home decor), this is a treasure trove and could soon turn out to be the trendiest wall art idea for every room in your house. All that's left for you to do is to learn how to get an artwork you love from the digital space onto your wall.

Imagine hanging a Peter Paul Rubens or a Vincent Van Gogh in your home. While it's common to visit a special exhibition and gaze at the work of the masters, this is your chance to bring that experience into your own space on a budget. If you're struggling to decide on a particular work, stick with the pieces that speak to you. One of the easiest tips for choosing the perfect artwork for your home is to look for styles that you'd naturally gravitate towards in a museum. Download the artwork as a high-resolution file and upload it to a retailer that will produce a print at the size you desire. Some recommend ordering the file as a giclée print, which is said to provide the best color match to the original, from an online retailer that specializes in producing large wall art.

The print will likely arrive in a tube. Place it on a table under heavy books for several days to flatten the print. Next, cut foam insulation board slightly smaller than the size of the artwork and glue it to the surface. This will allow you to wrap the print around the backing to make the piece look like a stretched canvas. Finally, apply an aerosol glue to the foam board and the back of the print and then carefully place the art on the board.

Now, a guide to choosing the right frames for your art. It's likely most open-access works won't be compatible with off-the-shelf standard-size frames, either from a store or an online retailer. This means that you'll have to purchase a custom frame, which can be very costly. But you can also DIY one with 1x2 pieces of wood cut at 45-degree angles and nailed together. Stain or paint the frame in the color of your choice. Because the entire piece will be light, you can install it in the home with picture-hanging strips. For large works and with some shopping around, the total cost for the project will likely be under $100.

You can save a lot of money by reproducing the files as photo prints or opting for a matte finish for paintings or a glossy finish for art photography. It's likely, however, you'll be forced to have these printed in standard sizes, which will mean cropping art to fit. Of course, this will allow you to buy frames off the shelf, which during a sale can be even more affordable (look for BOGO deals). You can also scour thrift shops or Facebook Marketplace for frames, even if you need to purchase them with the art included. To give frames an old-world patina, apply a buff with a metallic finish such as gold. For wood frames, use sandpaper for a distressed look.