A lovely image from Pinterest inspired me to make an attempt at a piece of art to fill an extra large frame in our dining room. I pinned this photo to my "Fun and Funky Diplay Ideas" board a year ago and keep going back to study it. What I have created doesn't really compare to this amazing wall, but this is the image that originally caught my eye and got the wheels turning in my head!
These appear to be sketches on old papers and fragments of antique documents. I am no sketch artist. I think my 5 year old's drawing skills are better than my own! So, I have come up with a method for using images from the Graphics Fairy printed on book pages and sheet music to create an oversized piece of artwork that I wanted to share with you here.
My attempt is feeble...and I know I can do better. I have plans to use this idea to create more pieces in the future. My mind is racing with the possibilities. I bet yours will be too by the end of this post!
The bird images from the Graphics fairy were printed on the sheet music and stuck inside of my big white frame about a month ago. I used this very method that I am going to explain here. I have been staring at those birds for a month now, thinking I needed to add something else...like a tree. So, as I put together a tree on book pages today, I photographed the process and thought I would write up a tutorial.
The bird images from the Graphics fairy were printed on the sheet music and stuck inside of my big white frame about a month ago. I used this very method that I am going to explain here. I have been staring at those birds for a month now, thinking I needed to add something else...like a tree. So, as I put together a tree on book pages today, I photographed the process and thought I would write up a tutorial.
I use the program called "Paint" to enlarge my image. I believe this program comes with most PCs. I used this same process for printing the quotes that I transferred onto fabric here.
After I had written that post, a couple of my readers shared websites with me that also allow you to enlarge images. I have not used any of these websites, but thought I would list them here in case you don't have Paint on your computer.
In the upper left corner of your "Paint" window is a "Paste" button. When you click on this button a drop box should appear with the words "Paste From." When you click there, a window will open displaying your computer files. I had previously saved the tree image to my desktop, so it was easy to find. When I double clicked on it, it came up in my Paint window. Another feature about the Paint program that I like is that it allows you to erase parts of an image that you don't wish to print. This was actually a picture of 3 trees. I simply erased the two that I didn't want.
Once I had my tree looking just right, I went to "print" and then "page setup." In the page setup window, you can change the orientation of your pages and "Fit to" the number of pages wide by tall you want your overall image to be. You can see that I made mine 4 pages wide by 6 pages tall. Before I put my paper into my printer, I numbered each page in the upper right hand corner to reference (1-24) (you'll see why later).
As you can see, There are not 24 pages here. I chose the ones I wanted to use and put the others aside. This is my template. Now I know which of these pages are going to be printed on and which will be blank.
I then went to work with my glue stick, adhering book pages over the printed images, paying careful attention to those page numbers and the way the image printed. I put my page numbers in the upper right hand corner of the pages, just as I set them in the printer, but the images came out of the printer the opposite way, so I glued my book pages upside down. Does that make sense? I think that different printers print different ways, so pay attention to these details if you want to save yourself some headache and extra work.
My printer prints on book pages and sheet music just fine. It's not a fancy or expensive printer, so I run all kinds of things through it that I probably wouldn't if I was really concerned about it. You know your printer and what it can handle...please don't break your printer and come back to blame me. I always make sure my book page edges are glued down well to printer paper and that there is no excess glue or sticky spots that might gum up my printer.
Once I had all of my pages back in order by page number, and facing the right direction, I loaded them into the printer and hit the "print" button for the second time.
As you can see, I had some margins and white areas to trim off.
That's where my paper cutter came in handy!
From there, it was a matter of piecing together the puzzle. I could have left it at that, glued down the pages onto a large board and filled in the voided areas with more book pages, but I had my sheet music bird art that I wanted to add this to, so I took my scissors and cut around the tree a little more before gluing it down with a glue stick.
When creating a piece to go inside of a frame, like this one, I just use the piece of cardboard that came inside the frame to glue my pages to.
This is an older photo of my shop display, but I wanted to show how I basically used this same method to create my "Girl in Pink" signage on the back wall of my booth. Instead of sheet music or book pages though, I used plain old printer paper that I had "aged" with coffee. You can read more about my paper aging method here.
I created a smaller version using these same methods and techniques to fit inside of this frame for a couple of flea markets I participated in last summer.
I hope these instructions were easy to follow! I really think that once you try it for yourself, you'll see how simple it is and how completely endless the possibilities are!
Let your imagination run wild! Be creative and have fun!
Thanks so much for your sweet visit today!
Best Wishes and Blessings,
Amanda
Sharing With:
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Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Through Life
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Treasure Hunt Thursday at From My Front Porch To Yours
What's it Wednesday at Elephants and Ivy
Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style
Vintage Inspiration Friday at Common Ground
