How to create a "put together" art grouping pronto

This may have already occurred to you, but I want to mention the simplest way I know of to get a cohesive display of art on your wall in a matter of hours. It's cheap, easy and undeniably good looking — a little like me. Kidding about the first two!

Two words: clearance calendars. For several years now my boyfriend has made a trip into Barnes & Noble after January 1 in search of wall calendars. He brings back some of the nicest ones I've seen, with themes like Paris, butterflies, vintage travel posters etc. They're oversized and printed on a classic laid finish paper rather than the garish high-gloss numbers you see everywhere. Best of all, they're beautiful enough to frame the following year — or seize the moment if you don't feel like waiting.

I'm framing up a group of six of these for the den:

Kindly excuse the poor quality of my photos, snapped with my iPhone. A photo stylist I ain't.

Another source, not to be overlooked, is old books. Thrift stores often have worn out books with tattered spines for under $5 that have beautiful color plates. Some good bets are scientific volumes (that's where the group in our bathroom came from — pictured below in Ikea frames), atlases, encyclopedias and field guides. You get the idea.


One more great source that's online is Vintage Printable, where you can download a huge variety of antique public-domain illustrations and photos for free. Print them yourself at home or have it done at Kinko's for a nominal fee. Either way, they'll look great! Some of my faves:

I've seen scientific charts like this going on Ebay for around $100.

Anthropologie had something very similar for sale a while back, priced a la Anthropologie of course.

A note should be made here that the file size of some of images are larger than others once downloaded. If you're not resolution, image size and/or Photoshop savvy, the nice folks at Kinko's are there to advise you on how large a print you can produce at good quality. Put the images you want to print on a cd or thumb drive and show them what you've got.