Free Art Printable:
Minimalist Military Alphabet – Infinitely Scalable
Hanging art representative of your personal interior style is an essential part to making your place feel like a home. The problem? Art – and the framing of it – is shockingly expensive.
That's why we've been creating and offering art prints you can download and print for free since 2013. The benefit goes beyond just saving on the price of art: You're able to print the art to fit both the space you need it for and the framing you have available to you.
I actually find that starting with a frame first is the most important part of not spending a ton of money on art. If you start with the art first, you're left having to either buy whatever size is closest enough to the art to fit, possibly causing wonky matting or positioning or overpaying for custom framing.
With this minimalist, Nordic-inspired art print, it's vector based, meaning you can scale it up as large as you want it to be. Fill a wall. Or decorate a side table.
Shown here in Ikea's $19 white Ribba frame, I like the way the simple, thin lines of the frame accentuate the print's negative white space. The result is a clean, modern home decor look
Like my bedroom? You can recreate it! Check out the full 3 part series, where we show you how to paint an accent wall, build this DIY headboard, make this industrial side table, and print and frame all of the art.
Affordable Art Printing
If you've been following Primer's intentional home features, you know we're big fans of the engineering print for creating large art for dirt cheap prices. These are created on blueprint printers and can be either black and white or color. They're not intended for high-resolution photos, but for simple, high contrast designs like our $30 giant map project or $22 DIY hanging lunar landing print its perfect. And for $7.99 at Staples, it's impossible to beat.
The only problem? Some readers have found certain Staples locations won't print anything that isn't a blueprint on their blueprint printers. I've printed many at my local store, by uploading and ordering through the Staples Print website then picking up in store. However, for this project, I tried to go into the store to order the print and was told I'd have to order an $89 poster. Nah. So try Staples first, but I would recommend uploading on the site and picking up in store. If they refuse, then…
FedEx Kinkos Temporary Prints
I actually found a similar option but is actually advertised for uses like this, instead of dealing with will-they-or-won't-they situations. Looking for alternate affordable printing solutions, I came across the Temporary Prints option from FedEx, which is intended for school projects and other presentation graphics that don't require the paper or print quality some may expect from poster prints.
Pricing is based on the amount of color is in the graphic, either “Accent Color (Under 25% of the image in color) or “Economy Color”. Since this project falls under the Accent Color option, it was only $1.99 per square foot. The final print ended up being about $11, a couple bucks more than an engineering print but the process was fast, easy, and self-service, and there was no risk of wasting time if Staples didn't want to do it.
(Like this side table? It's our next DIY project – and spoiler alert it's super easy and cheap to make.)
