Decorate Your Walls with DIY Art You Can Afford

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(Photo: Digital Trends)

When you trade up to a bigger house or apartment, you are always in need of more stuff (unless you were living like a hoarder to begin with). So you start with the necessities…furniture, rugs, lamps, etc. And once you have everything in place, you look around your rooms and, oops…the WALLS! They are blank and vast and need something as interesting, fresh, and sophisticated as your new, beloved home.

Art has always had a reputation of being costly. When you think art, you may think you have to go to a fancy shmancy gallery, sip some fancy shmancy wine, and stare at a wall with your hand to chin to contemplate its meaning. Au contraire, dear readers!

You don’t need an MFA to DIY your own art. Start by considering these three things:

  1. Size: How much space do you need to cover?

  2. Color: What’s your scheme? What hues in the room need to be accented? Perhaps a thread in your rug or your sofa’s throw pillows?

  3. Energy: Is your space in need of excitement or quiet? Order or randomness?

Maybe one of these 5 ideas will get your creative juices flowing!

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(Photo: A Beautiful Mess)

This is one genius project because it uses one of the most affordable and available materials at big box craft stores like Michaels: craft foam. The joy of this material is the ease in cutting it—your scissors or knife go through it like butter on a warm summer day. Try this stacked technique with letters, shapes, or even a silhouetted profile.

Related story on Yahoo! Makers: 7 Things You Can Do with 1 Gallon of Paint

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Hanging personal photos is charming and all, but it might not feel right next to your new mid-century sofa. You don’t have to leave your baby’s cute mug behind, though. Poppytalk came up with this cool, modern DIY photo technique that offers a more abstract, design-y feel to your photos.


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Think outside the frame and fill a blank wall with something a bit more textural. Oleander and Palm shows you how to make this gorgeous wall hanging just with a stick and yarn. Once you have all of your strands tied on, just give it a little haircut on the bottom to give it a dynamic shape. This step allows you to used a stick that isn’t perfectly straight.

Related story on Yahoo! Makers: Embracing Order in the New Year

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(Photo: A Beautiful Mess)

If you’re into that more sculptural wall art feel, this wood block project is so easy and visually interesting. Stain wood blocks (you can buy them at Create For Less) in different tones or even colors and then use wood glue (yes just glue!) to attach them to a board. To create different heights, glue shims underneath blocks in a random arrangement.

Related story on Yahoo! Makers: Cool Wall Decor—No Commitment Required

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(Photo: Sugar & Cloth)

Whether you are seeking randomness or a rigid pattern, this technique will work (and it’s rather genius). From afar you may think these are marbles glued to a canvas, or perhaps painted faux flower petals. But nope.

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This lovely work is made by stuffing scrolls of colored paper into painted chicken wire, mounted inside a frame. Think about it. You can create an ombre stripe, a repeat pattern, and you can even try to mimic a pixel pattern to copy an image.

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