1. Have you ever been inside anywhere I lived?
2. Are you really my friend/family member?
3. Do you know ME AT ALL?
A lot of you have asked me questions like "Where do you find all of it?" or "How can you afford to frame it?" or "How did you come up with the idea to frame that?"
To answer those questions, for starters, I like original stuff. I don't want to hang up the same old prints every one has in their house that they bought from art.com. Justin and I always make it a point to pick up some kind of art when we travel - we have a great carved driftwood piece from Costa Rica, a pretty little watercolor from Italy, etc. We typically don't spend a lot on that art either.
You can also go the weekend art shows and score some great deals. Remember this post? Great finds at the Melbourne Art Festival & Vero Beach Art Festival
I also love to frame concert posters, especially since I'm more into the indie rock scene. Some of my favorite pieces we have hanging are Death Cab for Cutie posters. (Which I might add, you can buy for yourself on Ebay!) I picked up a great Shins poster on Ebay on the cheap cheap.
I like to frame postcards. Vintage ones are fun, but I also like artsy photography ones. They are cheap to buy and even cheaper to frame. They go great when you hang them in a group.
IKEA is awesome for buying modern frames, and sometimes, they already have mats in them. I've also scored some great frames from Crate & Barrel in their outlet section.
Lastly, if you live in the Northern Virginia area, you're in luck. Sign up for Total Framing's mailings and they'll send you 50% off your entire framing order. Gather up whatever you've collected and get over there. They do a great job and have a nice selection of frames. You also save money if you don't mat stuff and just put a frame around it. It's when you start to get all "fancy mat" when the price goes up. It is super rare that I mat anything I pay to get framed.
Anyway, when my mom came to visit and finally helped me hang all of the framed art and whatnot, she counted something like 53 things that we hung up. Insanity, I know. But I also feel like that's what makes our home feel like a home and what shows off our personalities.
Well, I have another six items to add to the count! And I think most of them will go in the baby's room. I ended up using the same type of frame, which I picked up from Total Framing, called a Bamboo ecoframe. I also picked up mats for a few of the pieces - for a grand total of $75 and now I have 6 new pieces of artwork to hang.
The first two are from an artist we fell in love with while we were in Hawaii, but her paintings were super expensive. We were so happy to find note cards of her paintings for $6 each. A steal!
The next piece was a baby shower gift from our very talented art teacher at Titusville High School, Chrystal Henry. Isn't it precious?
I've had these postcards for years in a folder called "Stuff to Frame." The Key West postcard is actually one sent from Grandad and Pauline when I was in elementary school (I told you it's been years). The other one I can't remember where I picked up, but it's all different types of Florida shells.
Lastly, Justin's parents picked up this cute little piece when they were in Key West. It already came with a mat, so I just needed a frame!
There you have it! That's how I roll. I'll post pictures when I get the stuff back that I had Total Framing frame for me -- an awesome abstract-y/psychedelic print of the Beatles that Justin's parents bought at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and two small Van Gogh prints that Justin bought at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Just another thing we have in common - he was buying cool art before we were a couple!
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