Customized Room Art

My grandfather gave me the painting last year.  It was done by his first cousin, which would be my third cousin, while he was in college (so it's like 40+ years old).  My grandfather's other cousin was going to throw it out so he saved it and brought it home with him.  During one of my visits to see them last year he asked if I would be interested in taking some art work off his hands, well I am never one to pass up an option like that!  I think my grandparents have impeccable taste (he was an architect after all).  He showed me a few and I was immediately drawn to this one because of the train and the train tracks, very fitting for C's room.

 

It sat in C's closet for months.  Due to it's large size and need to be re-matted and framed, I put it on the back burner.  I'm cheap.  There I said it.  And honestly I didn't want to spend the money to have it done, but knew I could do it myself.  This week Hobby Lobby is having their mats on sale 50% off.  The largest premade they sell is for a 11x14 picture.  I didn't realize how big the painting was until there was still some showing behind the mat.  I had, in the garage, an old picture we use to have in our guest room (nautical themed) that we weren't using any more.  Perfect size frame for the mat.

Did you know you can reuse those frames? Yep, you totally can if you have a screwdriver and a hammer (and if you're real picky about the backside of a frame no one will see because it's on the wall, I'm sure you can buy that brown tape too).  I unscrewed the wire, cut through the tape (only on 3 sides), pushed back the staples, and pulled out the cardboard backing.  Windex'ed the glass and switched out the art.  Put the backing back, pushed down the staples, rescrewed the wire, and pow! new art!

I didn't want to cut the painting so I folded back the excess.  My grandfather would probably freak if he saw this!

I also found some cute dinosaur and vehicle scrapbook paper...so what did I do? Framed them!  The soccer art is from Target on clearance from $14.99 to $3.74 (reason #378 why I love Target).