Easy, Inexpensive Wall Art

Ever have one of those weeks where every day something, at least one thing, goes badly.  Well that was my week a couple of weeks ago.  It started with my son vomiting all over my bedroom carpet (on my birthday, no less), and then progressed to my washing machine over-flowing, and then Sunday (Father's Day) my Refrigerator broke.  Those were just a few of the highlights of that dreadful week.  Thankfully, thing seem to be going much better.  The fridge was repaired, just needed a simple thermostat - a quick and inexpensive repair- thankfully!  According to the repair man, my washing machine was fine, appears as though the water leaked out the door...I have a front loader.  The rubber seal sometimes pops off and it prohibits the door from closing securely....go figure.

Despite all this, I was, however, able to get a few things accomplished around the house!  One quick project I did, was make a beautiful piece of art to adorn one of my dining room walls!  I had seen and heard about framing left-over remnants of fabric or wallpaper, and making this your wall art.  So, I figured I would give it a try.  The most difficult thing for me was to find a fabric, more accurately, a pattern/design that I really loved and wanted to incorporate into my dining room.  I wanted to draw on the blues, whites and yellows I already had in the room.  After much searching, I came across this fabric at onlinefabric.com:



I love damask, and thought I would order a sample to see if it would coordinate well!  I received the fabric, and I absolutely loved it.  I ordered 2 yards of fabric, which is more than I needed for the  piece of fabric I was going to frame,  but I figured I could make some table runners for my dining room table too. 

Once I received the fabric, I began measuring, as I had hoped to cut an 18"x18" piece of fabric to then frame.  However, due to the pattern, size, etc. I had to play with my numbers a bit.  The large damask pattern was what I wanted to have centered in my frame, but it wasn't easy, as the repeat pattern is in the shape of a diamond.  I finally decided to go with a 16"x16" piece of fabric, with the damask in the center.  Before I cut the fabric, I ordered a matte black frame off Amazon.com.  The opening of the frame was 16"x16", but the overall dimensions of the frame were 18"x18".  That size would be perfect for the wall I had in mind to hang it on.

The frame arrived, and thankfully under the glass was a 16"x16" thin piece of paper.  I took my fabric and taped it to a sunny window and then adhered the paper atop of the fabric.  After some measuring, I taped the paper so that the large damask was centered on the paper, with an equal amount of fabric above and below the damask pattern.  I traced around the edges of the paper, and then cut just outside of the lines, so to ensure the fabric wasn't too small for the frame. 

The size of the fabric, once cut, was a little big, but it was fine. I then ironed the fabric to get out the wrinkles, etc.  BIG MISTAKE!!  The fabric is a dry clean only fabric, and my iron shrunk the fabric, enough that it was too small for the frame:-(  Sooooo, thankfully the way the pattern ran, I had another opportunity to try this whole process over again.  This time I ironed it but on a very low setting and did so, prior to cutting the fabric.  I repeated the process above for tracing and cutting the fabric.  This time the fabric fit within the frame just fine.  I then placed the back of the frame on and hung it on the wall.  The frame was all of $24, which was a steal for a square-shaped frame.  Apparently, a square shaped frame over 12"x12" is considered a speciality size. 

But you could frame anything and make it art for your walls!  I'm eager to try this concept with wallpaper!  Here's a pic of the finished product!  The flash on my camera illuminated the center of the damask....kind of cool!