I'm currently collecting frames from various thrift shops to try and achieve something awesome on the walls of our bathroom. While on the hunt, I spotted a giant frame (for $5.99) at Goodwill. It was not with the normal frames but in the "art" section. (I always take peek there too to see what I can re-purpose.)
The art in it (shown above) was not my taste. But the huge size? The light wood? The killer square mat? I loved ALL of those things.
Enough that I didn't mind that the top of the frame was scratched (again, may I remind you: $5.99).
I bought it promptly and on the way home decided I'd use an engineer print to get a cheap photo that would be large enough to fill the square space. With the maroon mat removed, it's about 17.5×17.5.
Picking a photo was easy. I knew I wanted a current one of the three of us. When I frame photos, I am always looking for something more non-traditional. Us, in our life, doing our thing is so much more interesting to me than the "posed" stuff. This photo was taken with my iPhone (into a very smudged mirror) and processed with VSCO app to make it black and white.
prepping photos to become engineer prints from elise blaha on Vimeo.
I recorded a VERY short video that shows how I prepped the photo to order my engineer print (you can watch it above). This particular engineer print was $1.79 and I ordered it here.
The important thing to note from the video is that you must make your photo canvas 300 dpi and then enlarge your photo to fit that size. This is going to give you a better image than just trying to print a small photo in large size (without first resizing it up). The method I share will not work for high-quality printing – if this was a real photo it would look totally grainy, but for a low-quality engineer print, it works pretty well.
I picked up my print in store. Engineer prints only come in black and white and are printed on what feels like normal computer paper. Mine was rolled and Ellerie may have grabbed it, causing a few dents. (No big deal.)
Once I had the print, I got to work opening up my frame. Since this piece had been professionally framed it was a bit more work to replace the art (I had to rip the paper backing and then pull up a bunch of staples) but not that big of a deal (again, $5.99).
Then I dropped my photo into place (I didn't even have to trim it because the mat is so huge) and sealed it back up. (Then I noticed there was a lot of dust in it and had to open it up again.) But…
TA-DA! AN EIGHT DOLLAR (FUN) STATEMENT FOR OUR BEDROOM.
p.s. I totally get that repeating a similar project like this means finding a huge frame for cheap at a thrift store in the first place. So that's annoying. BUT, if you're already headed there on occasion, take a spin through the art section. You many find something great and if you do, now you have a fun way to re-purpose it (for cheap).
enJOY it 
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