Large Scale Artwork

I pinned this picture a long time ago on Pinterest because I loved the artwork and hoped to figure out a way to DIY it.  

Well, I did it!

In this post I told you about discovering Wikimedia Commons for tons of free artwork.  

You can't imagine my excitement when I found this artwork!!!  I knew the rest would be easy!

I wanted this picture for the office (lots of decorating still to do in there!).  So based on that, I determined roughly the size I wanted.  The copy lady at Staples helped me know (based on the scale of the original image) what exact size it would end up being.  Mine ended up being 55"x45".  The printer at Staples can only handle blowing up pictures to 3 ft. tall so I asked the copy lady to please print the top half of the picture and then the bottom half separately with a little overlap so I could match the two halves together.  Sorry but I have no idea how she did that on her end - she just figured out how and got it done for me.  I love this lady - she figured out how to make my music artwork too!

Next I mod-podged it onto a 3/4" piece of plywood from Lowes that I had them cut to my pictures dimensions (cost for the wood was $22).  This was a great idea I got from here.  While at Lowe's I also picked up 3 pieces of 8ft. corner mold ($5 each).  This was to frame out the ugly edges of the plywood.  The cost of plywood ends up being slightly cheaper than buying a canvas and you can make the plywood any size you need which is a plus.  It is heavier though, so heavy duty picture hanging hardware was also required.  I picked some up at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon so it was $6.

Once the picture was dry, I spray painted the corner molding black then glued 

and nailed it (using a nail gun) to the edges of the plywood.

Voila!

This print has a "grayish" imperfect background which I liked, but I still may stain it a bit 

to make it look "old" like my "pinned" inspiration picture.

So total cost was $43 plus around $6 for the 2 large prints from Staples - Just under $50.  

Not a big price difference from my Music Note artwork (it was $63) but this is slightly bigger.  

And I thought I should try (and blog about) another option for making large scale artwork.