I have to admit that most of the walls in our house are bare. I believe that artwork for the home should be personal and representative of its dwellers. It takes me forever to find the right subject matter to represent the family and also fit our design aesthetic. Having a background in architecture and design, blueprint art seemed an obvious choice. Blueprint art is available in a multitude of subject matter ranging from architecture, vehicles, and product patents. You can purchase them readily from websites like Etsy or Art.com. But, if you want to create a customized gallery, you can (with the help of photo editing software) print your own artwork in the colors and sizes you choose.
What some don’t realize, is that many of the images used for blueprint art is public domain. You can look up and download copies of US patent images from the US Patent and Trade Office here and there are also web sites like the-blueprints.com.
Using photo editing software like Photoshop, I inverted the image to turn the lines from black to white, and chose a dark grey background. Note, this will also enable you to have a consistency with background color will all your images.
Original image:
Edited image:
A local photo center like Walmart should be able to print poster size images.
Michaels has a line of frames by Aaron Brothers.
These worked great for me as I wanted the frame moulding to be consistent in color and size. After drafting up several different sizes, I came up with a layout that worked. I like edges to align and spacing to be uniform:
The frames do not come matted, and since I’m frugal (cheap) I just added a white border to all the images. Here are the photoshop mockups:
3M Command Strips work great for this and will ensure the pictures stay level and secure.
Each member of the family has an image that represents them to include a microscope and Bunsen burner for the biology teacher, trombone for the marching band student, steam locomotive for the train lover, and Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato for the sci-fi geeks. Final installation:
housezhu 