Traditional Decorating on a Dime -- Free Wall Art

I don't know about you, but when I moved into our current house, I was overwhelmed by how to fill all of our bare walls. Not only was I at a loss for ideas, but there was the whole "we just bought a house & have no money" issue. My first thought in these situations is always, how can I be creative and make this work? Enter: FREE (my favorite word) art.

You may remember a few of my free art projects from both this house & the old house:

The wine themed kitchen corner with a corkscrew printable.

Our gray bathroom re-do with a speckled egg print. I loved that re-do but we didn't live with it for long because we sold the house soon after....

Animal studies mounted on fabric in our current eat-in area.

(I cringe looking at these dark pictures, taken with my old camera!)

Very recently, my "You've Got Mail" inspired art in our master bathroom.

Of course, in some cases I needed to buy frames (hello, Michaels 40% off sales, here I come!) or mats (ditto on Michaels sales), but I often had frames sitting around from old projects. Also, I've recently noticed that thrift shops have a lot of picture frames for just a few dollars each.

Sources For Free Art

There are so many sources for free printable art on the web (what did we do before the internet???) -- just type in "free printable art" on Pinterest & you'll come up with 100s. I've gathered here a few of my favorites and a few that I've just discovered:

The Graphics Fairy

The Graphics Fairy is my favorite site for free art. She has over 4,500 high quality vintage images available for download. The site is very easy to search and she even has a category called "Instant Art". How great is that ?? Here are a few that caught my eye:

New York Public Library Digital Collection

Another thing to love about New York -- they share their art! This site has over 800,000 images available for download. I've printed a few of their architectural drawings as art for our front hall when we first moved in (I'm not sure where I put the photos). There is so much here -- maps, the previously mentioned architectural drawings, posters, postcards, antique magazine images and more. The children's book illustrations make me want to decorate a nursery all over again. Here are just a few that I found in a quick browse:

Extremely intricate monograms.

Old Maps of Paris

I just found this site & love it. It has...you guessed it...maps of Paris. There aren't a huge number of images, but the images are very high quality. My favorite is Paris 1575:

They have a sister site, Old Maps of New York, that has...wait for it...maps of New York.

Free Vintage Posters

I could spend hours browsing through Free Vintage Posters images. They have everything from turn-of-the-last century Parisian wine posters to wartime propaganda to the circus to public service announcements ("Destroy Syphilis" anyone??).