Yard Sale Picture Frame Transformation

The lost camera charger has been found! It was in my husband’s closet under his shoes. You know, a totally logical place for electronics to be stored. At least we clearly know who is at fault for losing the charger in the first place. 🙂

Anyway, now I can share what I’ve been up to!

We’ve got company coming in a few weeks, so it’s motivated me to do some much-needed decorating in the basement family room and the kids’ bedroom. We have a black leather sofa in the family room, and there’s a lot going on in the room already, so I’ve decided to stick with black, white and grey decor.

I was at a yard sale the other day and found these prints for 50 cents each:

It’s not often that you find two matching frames that are this large (18″x22″), so I snatched them up. I knew they would be perfect on the wall above my couch.

But the cat prints weren’t really my thing. So they had to be transformed… the sooner the better.

I spray painted the frames grey, then realized that the mats were a funky cream color. So I painted them too. Did you know you can paint mats? Yep, it’s awesome. Opens a whole new realm of possibilities at yard sales and thrift stores.

Now they are a nice white. Much better!

I tried my hand at some abstract art…

Bye bye kitties!

I painted right over those cats with white paint, taped over that, then painted different grey/silver/black/white designs over that. When I removed the tape, it left white lines.

But in the end I wasn’t digging it. It reminded me too much of a sofa from the 80’s. So I went with Plan B.

I pinned a Valentine’s Day card that I love, but it wasn’t high enough resolution to print large-scale (and it said, “Happy Valentine’s Day” on it), so I made my own version in Photoshop. I also found old-fashioned bicycle clip art that I thought would go with the “riding” theme. I put the two images into an 18×24 document in Photoshop and sent it to Staples as an engineering print. It was only $1.79 for an 18×24 print! When I got home, I cut the paper in half and tah-dah! Two large prints for super cheap!

I am much happier with my second attempt. Now I have large art to fill my empty wall and I spent less than $5 on it. Yippee!