I love old, antique oil paintings. They fit so well with the old world DeVol style decor I’m trying to achieve.
We’ll see if I ever get there. Baby steps…
Original oil paintings by the likes of Fitz Henry Lane would never be in my budget. And even beautiful oil paintings that I find at antique shops are few and far between. The ones I like just aren’t in my current budget. Not to mention that many of the first-floor walls will be coming down soon in our house so it’s hard to justify spending much on wall hangings that might not suit our space in the near future.
Then I came across Instragramer @ahomeisannounced. She has a great tutorial on how to make an oil painting dupe! Check it out!
I found this old wall hanging at a local thrift shop or yard sale months ago. I don’t even remember where. I’m quite sure it was no more than $2. I do not like the print or the mat, but the frame was in good shape and it was a pretty gold.
So it came home with me.
As did many other wall hangings over a period of a few months.
Anyway, those wall hangings have sat (and most are still sitting) in our makeshift storage room (aka our office and one of the prettiest rooms in the house that has been an abomination since we moved) for a few months.
Then I found a “new” print and I decided which frame would work for it. It wasn’t the perfect size but it was close enough (the old frame was smaller, which was good). And I tried to put it all together while we were working on the apartment. Mid-construction. Like I had time to finish it. 🤣
It sat on my makeshift craft worktable at the end of our dining room table for a few weeks while I tried to find the time to get to it. Not a great spot since we eat there everyday.
Fast forward to yesterday and I finished it!
Here are the steps I took, loosely pulled from the slightly more sophisticated methods of @ahomeisannounced. I say “more sophisticated” because her steps are really easy and I did a hack job compared to her.
TOOLS
- Old frame (no size in particular)
- Mod Podge (I purposely chose the matte finish)
- Inexpensive, washable, polyester/nylon 1″ brush like this one
- Roller (I had one from our kitchen that worked, but this style roller would work)
- Etsy print
1. Print the Image
There are many public domain sites where you can download art for free. But I decided I wanted a particular Fitz Henry Lane painting of Blue Hill, Maine. Fitz Henry Lane was a renowned artist who painted in both the Rockport and Gloucester area of Massachusetts as well as the Castine and Blue Hill area of Maine. Castine is a second home to me and I lived in Rockport for 10 years (and JD grew up in Rockport!), so Fitz Hugh Lane paintings just make us feel good.
The only one I could decide on at that moment was only available as a $5 download from Etsy. So I bought it and downloaded the high-res image to my computer. I lied yesterday on Instragam when I said it was free! I forgot.🤪
I downloaded a high-res image to my computer. I have to say that finding a site that would easily download a free image wasn’t so easy. But check out @ahomeisannounced because she seems to have figured it out.
Then I uploaded it to staples.come to be printed. If there was an option to choose the highest-quality printing, I would have chosen that. I just don’t remember. Next time I go through this process, I will update here. The image was quite large so it printed on a very large size paper. The cost to print was about $15.
It only took a few hours for Staples to print it. I happened to be in the Staples area that afternoon and brought it home. Very carefully. It was a big page and I was very afraid it would get damaged!
2. Separate the Frame
I separated the frame from the mat and the print. The frame was in good shape and I liked the gold finish, so I decided it did not need updating. I put it aside.
I threw away the mat. It was just ugly. Very 80s.
I put aside the glass. I knew I wouldn’t be needing it, but it was an integral part of the layers in the frame. Rather than trying to find another piece of cardboard or something of just the right size and thickness, I decided to keep the glass as a layer in the back of the frame.
Last, I took the old print and used that as my backing for the new print.
3. Mat the Image
I smeared the old print with Mod Podge. It’s this cool glue that I’m finding has many different uses. I smeared the entire image. Every corner and every edge.
Then I carefully placed the image over the wet glued mat. NOTE: the new print was larger than the old image. So there I placed it in such a way that the excess (that I would cut off) was okay with me not being in the final product.
Then I took my roller to smoothly a-fix the new image to the old. I did not do a good job. At all. There were a number of wrinkles that I couldn’t fix no matter how hard I tried.
I will try harder next time. Know better, do better. I would watch @ahomeisannounced for a tutorial on that.
Once the glue dried, I cut the excess image from the edges. I just used regular scissors.
4. Smear Mod Podge
Then I used Mod Podge again, but this time to make the print look like an oil painting! I spread a ton of it around, then brushed it with the paint brush. It’s white and will look totally weird, but will dry. I’ll try to add a video at some point.
I let it dry in between doing 5-6 layers. I also washed the paintbrush in between layers in soap and water, then let the brush dry completely before using again.
5. Put It All Together
When the print was ready to go, I put the frame all back together. I put the glass in the back so it’s still there if I want it someday and it helps maintain the integrity of the entire wall hanging.
Voila! It was all done and ready to go up on the wall!
Despite the wrinkles, I love how it turned out! And when we take down this wall in the next few months (year?), I’ll move it elsewhere!
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