DIY Cheap Wall Art

Since we moved into this house almost 3 years ago, I have had a plan to do something really amazing on  the hallway walls.  To no avail.  I have struggled with what to do, whether I should do floating shelves, arrange family photos, hang some amazing vintage looking wallpaper, paint the walls a bright fun color or hang artwork.  After several attempts to make it look good, I left it empty with the holes from previous frames and it's been that way a LONG LONG time now.  I am one of those people that really gets bothered by emptiness.  Everyday I walk down my hallway & cringe at the naked walls.  

Then, I was reading the September Issue of Martha Stewart magazine and in an instant planted my eyes on the most inspiring thing.  A bachelor pad with HUGE canvases with very basic black lines painted on them.  Ah Ha, I thought to myself,  I can do that!

Well, canvases are not cheap and I didn't know the first thing about painting.  So I called my sister-in-law, who coincidentally is an amazing artist, she's got skills I tell ya, and got a little how to from her.  I went to Michaels and Hobby Lobby to price canvases.  Michaels had their 36 X 48 canvases on sale buy one get one 50% off.  That would make them $60 total.  Then I had a coupon that I printed from Hobby Lobby for 40% off.  In the end, I realized that Mr. Vaught could build them much cheaper and so that was the way of it.  He does build furniture and all so I knew he could build a simple canvas.  So, here's what we did.

Tristan had scrap poplar left over from projects in his shop so that was FREE.  I took my 40% off coupon to Hobby Lobby and bought the gesso primer (large container) which made it $10.  Then I went back the next day with another 40% off coupon and bought the canvas in the fabric section for $8 (about 2 1/3 yards of 60 inch wide canvas).  The small print on the coupon said you couldn't use 2 coupons in one day so it was perfectly legal to go back ;)  I borrowed 2 paint brushes from my SIL, but you can use any old paint brush lying around.  She also had a bottle of black acrylic paint she gave me, but it only costs $6.99 from HL so still cheap.

Total COST for two 24X36 custom canvas art pieces:  $18

I will post how to make the canvases, etc...and after shots in a couple of days.  I still have some work to do in the hallway, including finding a rug (unless anyone has a DIY on rug making...I actually do, but YIKES).

BTW, if you wanted to skip building canvases and just buy them, it would still be pretty cheap.  ou could easily do this for under $100.  That's muy cheapo if you ask me!  More on that later :)

Sorry for the picture quality (taken with my iphone at night)