During Halloween, I wanted to create some custom art for my home. My main focus of this project, was to find a way to create art from my home without it, breaking the bank. I think this is a great tool for those who want a one of a kind art piece but don’t have the talent of van Gogh.
Materials:
- Picture frames in any size
- Optional is paint to restore those frames or rub n buff ( which I love)
- An AI image- more on this in a minute
- A local printer to print the images
- Tape for hanging
Step 1: Find the frames
I went to my local thrift store and found some big frames that I loved and gave them a little bit of new life with a fresh coat of paint where needed. I painted the inside edge black to get rib of the red wood detail on one. I used a little bit of rub and buff to give the gold accents a pop. Overall these were quick fixes. I like the frames I found due the chunky gold detailing. Find something that fits your home and taste.
Step 2: Making the image
This part was really fun. I have worked with several different AI generators in the past and have found one that was perfect for this project. You do need an account to get started. BUT you do not need to purchase credits or any kind of membership in order to get these images.
I wanted something that was unique and customizable.
I will say the only downside of doing it this way is that it does create the image at a lower resolution of 72 dpi. If you want to have a higher quality resolution image, you can pay for a membership or subscription to the service to be able to download those bigger files. These were going to be Halloween decorations for me, so I was not concerned if the image turned out a little bit blurry or had some kind of banding or resolution issues. Based on whatever you decide to use the AI images for be sure to take this part into consideration.
Open up the website and begin creating AI generated images by inserting prompts into the prompt field. Be descriptive and choose which style you want it to generate it in. I wanted a painting style and I wanted it to be vertical not landscape.
You can choose the size of your image and the output style on the left-hand side, there are so many different options and you can create very lifelike images and just about any size you want.
Contrary to other AI generators I have used in the past that only creates square images, this was a really nice feature to be able to create some thing that would fit into the frames I had found at the thrift store.
Most finished images are portrait or landscape. Meaning that one side is longer than the other, not square. So I thought having this option to be able to create whatever size I wanted was super helpful.
Once you create your image, it will show around three different generated images based on the prompt that you fed into it. You can scroll through and see which one you like.
From there, you are able to click download image and save to your desktop or anywhere else that you can find the file.
If you feel like the generated images are not quite what you were looking for. You can go back and adjust your prompt accordingly. I ended up doing so many times, and then adding this witch from another prompt later in photoshop. You can do this several different times to try to see what works best for you. I believe you have up to 10 different generation Prompt times available per day on this site. So keep that in mind and don’t just waste your prompts.
Here are some of the other images I created on those prompts… as you can see you can create just about anything:
I created two different photos for different areas in my house.
Step 3: Printing the images
Now for printing the images. I googled different print options in my area. Sometimes Staples or Walgreens will have options to do bigger prints, but I needed something bigger than what they offered.
I went to a local printer called AlphaGraphics. I know it is a chain and a lot of different areas have this kind of printerstore. I took my images to their site with a USB drive, making sure that I had sized them correctly in Photoshop first. This may not be necessary for you, but I wanted to double check and make sure. Sometimes they can do this for you at the store too.
I printed them on poster paper with a matte finish. This was their lowest quality paper and was very inexpensive. Like I mentioned before since these were going to be Halloween decorations, I did not need a photo quality paper or anything thick. Depending on where you end up using these for, you may choose a different option. I wanted to keep it affordable and was not concerned about the quality of the paper.
For both of these prints I paid around $20 total. One of the prints was 5 feet tall by 2.5 feet wide and the other print was 16 inches wide by 24 inches tall.
So both of the prints were bigger in size and it was very inexpensive to do. Look around and find different options that meet your needs best. An online photo lab that does great photo quality prints for an inexpensive price is Pro Prints or nations photo lab.
Step 4: Attaching the prints to the frame
All of the frames that I got had a backing to them already. One was cardboard and one had a full backing and piece of glass in it. When I was choosing frames, I specifically looked for things like this because I knew that inserting a flimsy printed photo later would be easier if I already had a backing on it to work with.
I removed the backing and staples from the back of the picture frame.
Once detached, I used tape and rolled it into small circles so that each roll was double sided.
And then stuck the paper to the original, backing working from one end to the other to make sure that it was smooth and had no ripples or bubbles. I did this on both pieces and it worked so easily. If you want us to be a more permanent art piece, you could also glue this in or create your own back in from another piece of cardboard. I wanted to be able to switch these out seasonally so tape was a quick and easy option for me.
And that’s it! They had hanging hardware already so that part was done. I love how spooky these turned out, and can’t wait to make some more artwork for Christmas soon!
Let me know if you tried this artwork hack out! I think its a fun way to get free custom art for your home.
-Amanda