This upcycled wall art piece was created from 2 old paintings that I took apart. Some of the supplies I needed, I already had on hand (brackets, staple gun and ribbon) so it only cost me $15 to upcycle this wall art. Here’s the story…
Have you ever been to one of those painting classes where you paint and drink wine? I’ve been twice. It was a lot of fun, right? Yeeeeesss! And you came home with a beautiful Picasso-esq painting that you couldn’t wait to hang up on the wall, right? Yeee….um…No.
Yeah I know, me too. So these are the paintings my husband and I did.
Because we painted them I felt like I had to put them up for at least a little bit, and I did, but after a few months the novelty wore off and I was ready to get rid of them. My only problem was, I have a hard time throwing out perfectly good, albeit unattractive, items.
I thought about donating to Goodwill but I figured they would just end up in the trash because no one in their right mind would pay for these. So that meant I had to keep them.
They took up residence in our closet for almost a year when I finally came up with a plan for them. I recently renovated our master bathroom and needed some type of art for the wall above the toilet. I wanted something inexpensive because well, it’s a toilet, so I decided to upcycle the old paintings into a single, larger, new piece of art.
To start, I removed the canvas from each frame. A screwdriver and pliers were all that were needed. Next, I secured the two frames together with clamps so they would not shift while I attached them to each other with screws and metal stripping. I thought about just gluing them together with wood glue, but I went with screws instead as it would make it easier for me to disassmeble them later if I wanted to upcycle them into something else again in the future.
After securing the back, I turned the frame over and stapled the front for extra support. The two frames, originally 16×20″ in size, were now combined into a single larger frame measuring 16×40″.
I purchased a Glitter Damask Apparel Fabric from Hobby Lobby. I only needed 18″ (half a yard), so the total cost was just $3.50.
Using my staple gun, I wrapped the fabric around the frame and stapled it to the back. I then took some 3″ wide gold ribbon and stapled it to the back of a gold wooden lattice piece I had left over from a previous project. The lattice piece was originally square. I purchased it from Ross for $10. I only needed the corners for a project I was working on, so after cutting the corners off, I was left with a circular piece. It’s just been sitting in my crafting room waiting to become something.
For the wooden lattice I used two pieces of ribbon. I stapled one ribbon to the top of the lattice and the other ribbon to the bottom of the lattice. Then it’s kind of like I was wrapping a present with ribbon. I wrapped the top ribbon over the top of the frame and stapled it to the middle of the framework on the back. Then I took the bottom ribbon around the bottom of the frame and also stapled it to the middle of the framework on the back.
I turned the piece over, and that was it. After an hour of work and less than $15 in new materials, I had my upcycled wall art. If you enjoy upcycling, check out some of my other upcycling projects! Need some budget friendly ideas? Check out these 10 Tips for Finding and Making Budget Wall Decor by ApartmentGuide.com.
