Less than $5 DIY Floating Frame with Wall Art Part 1

Good Thursday morning, friends! Hope you all are having a wonderful week! I've been busy moving, not so much packing, as we just moved last year into a rental, and thank goodness I hadn't really unpacked. That will wait until next week. What will be nice is, my children have a 3 day weekend next weekend, so if we get all moved before next Friday, it will be a really nice weekend to just relax, but that means a busy upcoming weekend!

In my attempt to go through and either give away or toss away things that I didn't think would fit in with the new house, while I was rummaging through my old boxes, and looking through old magazines, I have hoarded stored for later browsing, I came across some inspiration that I had never heard of; floating frames. Although I've had floating shelves before at our old house, and something I want in the new house as well, the concept of floating frames had escaped me.

With anything new to me, I became intrigued.
First of all how does the glass stay in, how do you keep the photo on the glass??

What I love about our new house is all the wall space. I have always wanted a Gallery Wall, so this idea fit perfect for what I am trying to achieve.

First, I found a couple of frames, I already had on hand. For my youngest daughter's room, she's wanting a Pretty Pink Paris room, so I want to use the Shabby Chic distressed picture frame.

Other great places to find inexpensive frames are the dollar store, Goodwill, and garage sales. You could also use 50% off coupons for Michaels, Joanns or Hobby Lobby!

Second, where to find the art work. One good way to promote your blog is to offer free printables. This is really nice, because there are plenty of talented and creative bloggers out there who have these truly beautiful pintables that make amazing fine artwork. Here are two I enjoy, On Sutton Place, and Craftberry Bush.

One way that I just found out about, is to browse through Flickr, and search for photos with a Creative Commons copyright license. Here is one of a lighthouse I found, as always, I link back to the original source.

Ram's Island Lighthouse

There are so many Art Gallery quality photos, with endless possibilities. I download the largest size available, and upload the pictures I want to print to Walgreens. A 4x6 is around .30, a 5x7 is $2.49, and an 8x10 is 3.99. You can also order sizes ranging from 11x14 to 24x36. The largest size I am able to order from Flickr prints is 16x20 for 15.99. Still not bad pricing for artwork.

For today's project, I'm keeping it simple with 4x6s. It may not seem like a big size, but the impact it has on a small empty space of wall is huge.

A couple other places to find free artwork, is first if you haven't visited the Graphics Fairy, what are you waiting for. In an upcoming project, I am planning on using a French transfer graphic from her.

The Vintage bird with a lilac I also found at Graphics Fairy.

Looking for more inspiration,  You can find more Vintage Seed packets on my Pinterest board.

Follow Cherishing A Sweet Life's board Vintage Seed Packets on Pinterest.

Since I love this time of year for fresh strawberries. That is how I found this Vintage Strawberry Seed Packet!

source

The next couple of steps are super easy.

First I put a bracket on the back of the frame.

 Next,I glued the glass in with Gorilla glue, along the inside edges of the frame, with only a small beaded amount.

Lastly, I picked up these invisible Elmer's glue dots in the Scrapbooking section of Wal-Mart. They are acid free, so if you are using one of your own photos the glue won't damage them. When I put the glue dots on the front of the photo, even though they are invisible, I didn't like how I could still see them (maybe it's just me). What worked for me, is putting the glue dot on the very edge of each back corner, and putlled the glue dot down to the glass, making it barely visible from the front!

And Voila! That is the beginning of my Floating Frame wall art gallery for less than $5.
 I hope you enjoyed this.

 On Saturday I will be sharing with you, my plans for my gallery wall. See you soon!

Until Next time! xo Christine

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