Pogue’s Basics: Money - Free fine art for your fine walls

Fine art for your walls is usually considered a wealthy person’s game. A handsome original piece of art might cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, plus $300 to get it custom-framed.

There is, however, an ingenious way to get stunning artwork for nothing — and to custom-frame it for one-tenth as much as you’d expect.

First, pick out the free art. Visit Flickr.com, one of the Internet’s largest repositories for spectacular photography. Yes, owned by Yahoo, but that’s not the point.

Search for the kind of imagery you’re looking for: landscape, cityscape, trees, sunset, abstract, or whatever. (Bonus tip: Search for shots of “spiral staircases.” Those make really cool art, especially in black-and-white.)

Now you want to find the free ones — the ones whose creators have given permission for anyone to use their work in any way.

To do that, click the “Any license” pop-up menu and choose “All creative commons.” Now you’re looking at pictures that you’re free to download and print.

Click the photo and inspect it; make sure that its resolution will be high enough for the print size you want. Download the file.

Now, order the framed print. A number of websites offer professional printing and framing of any picture you send them. At Mpix.com, for example, you can upload your photo, choose a frame type, specify a final size, and order the whole thing. They’ll print the photo on gorgeous paper and frame it for you in a couple of days. An 8-by-10-inch photo becomes an 11.5-by-13.5–inch framed print — and costs about $26.

The results look exactly like the most professional, high-end photography and framing you could possibly buy. Nobody will ever know that your grand total expenditure was 26 bucks.