I love artwork and one day plan to make a million dollars so that I can cover my home with pieces by Mondrian and Seurat. But until then, I enjoy thinking up new ideas to make custom artwork for my barren walls – on the cheap! I’ve always loved the simplicity of botanical prints, but felt like their look was too vintage for our pseudo-modern home. So, one day I decided to play around with photoshop to see what I could come up with, and the result was surprisingly perfect! This little number can be created with just a few simple steps and look like a million bucks… which one day I will have. whahaha.
I started with doing a simple google search for “botanical prints” and found some coral ones that tickled my fancy. Their simple lines were just modern enough, but the organic shape kept things fluid and less rigid than say, a Mondrian. Side note, I love google. Really. We have a little love affair going on. I use the big G if I ever have a question/query and it never disappoints. Oh, how I love thee.
After you find an image that rocks your world, just open it in photoshop and do these two simple steps (if you don’t have photoshop, send it to me! I love helping my homedogs out). Choose a color that you’d like your image to be (I matched the color that was in the botanical print). Then, go under Filter- Sketch and choose Graphic pen. The graphic pen tool does a sketchy line drawing of your image, and the botanical print lends itself so well to this because of it’s white background. After that, hit print. You can tweak the colors/size for a particular frame, but the artistic part of it is that simple.
Pop these puppies in a crisp white frame (or a variety of colored/textured frames) and hang them on the wall in multiples. I picked up these frames from Target, but plan to get some similar ones this weekend from Ikea for another DIY art project. Easy peasy, right?
P.S. If you didn’t catch that, I’m going to our new Ikea this weekend. I might burst into stars with excitement – I can’t wait! It’s like the mothership is calling me home.
P.P.S. I am partially Swedish so that last comment almost made sense. Almost.
This is sooo cool. Make me some, please.
Brilliant!
Amazing! I thought you guys had purchased those for a bajillion dollars at Crate and Barrel.
[...] March 7, 2009 by theartfulabode After hearing the buzz about town that ZGallerie is closing 25 of its stores, I decided to head over to my neighborhood Z and see what kind of sales I could score myself. I talked to the saleswoman and found out that the Charlotte store isn’t going to be closed forever, despite the fact that they were closed by corporate last week, and then reopened again this week. Seems that things are pretty shaky (bad for them), but they are sporting some pretty incredible sales (good for me). All of their furniture is 15% off and all accessories are 20% off, plus additional sales on top of that. I spotted a few things I might like to make my own, but walked away with this little faux coral piece to put in my living room, to complement our custom coral artwork. [...]
Everyday, at 3PM, I say the following prayer:
“Thank you baby Jesus for Google! Amen.”
Have you played with any of the other artistic filters in PS and been met with good results?
I haven’t really played with many other PS filters (some are a bit cheesy) but I have downloaded some free Kubota actions that are awwwwwesome. I think a lot of professional photographers use them in their post-editing, but I just like to pretend like I know what I’m doing. Check ‘em out! http://www.kubotaimagetools.com/
So I totally lied on the free photoshop actions. I got them from Totally Rad Actions, not Kubota tools. Whoops! Check out the real tools here –
http://gettotallyrad.com/#samples-7a1dc
LOVE!! The coral, the frames, the grouping–the whole shebang. Plus it’s unique so no one else has this exact art–bonus!
(BTW, thanks for popping by my blog and for your sweet comments on my seafan art!)
@freckles chick: no, thank YOU for stopping by. :) i hope you get cracking on the marble tile and crown moulding so I can check it out on your blog!