I love the style of old vintage hanging posters. These posters add such charm and character to a room, but they can be hard to find and pretty pricey. Luckily, they are easy to recreate using a few easy-to-find supplies.
You can find art almost anywhere – we have shared lots of Free Printables on Our Handcrafted Life that I have designed myself. Today, I used the Free Printable Christmas Sheet Music. I wanted to add a large wall decoration to a giant blank wall in our house for Christmas, but I wanted it to be more neutral in tone. Not that I don’t love things like animated reindeer, but I just know that if I hung Rudolph on my wall he would scare the pants off me when I’m stumbling through my house to get a glass of water late at night.
Once I chose the print, I had it printed at Staples using their ‘Engineering Print’. These prints are very large (mine was 24″ x 36″, but they go all the way up to 36″ x 48″) and very economical. You aren’t supposed to use these prints for pictures, but I had no problems printing sheet music. At less than $5/print, they are certainly worth a try.
I then cut my dowels down to 2 inches longer than my prints – so my dowels were cut to 26 inches. Then I used a dark stain to add some depth to the wood.
You could leave your print as is, but I decided to age it a bit using this really easy tea staining method. It’s simple, but there are a few tips and tricks to doing it well, so I wrote a whole post about how to tea stain paper here.
Once the tea stain had dried, I used a very thin line of hot glue to attach the print to the dowels.
I measured to center the print in the middle of the dowel with about 1 inch of dowel overhanging the print on either side.
Then I wrapped the twine a few times around the top dowel and tied it in the back to finish the vintage look.
I think it’s simply beautiful.
I love the vintage feel of the display, the antiqued paper, and the sheet music.
Do you think you’ll try this project? What print would you like to see as a vintage poster?
That’s beautiful!! Do you think wood glue would work instead of hot glue? Thanks.
I think this is so pretty! Thank you for sharing.
I love this so much! I know our Staples won’t print it on an engineering print, though… I’ve tried 🙁 so maybe I need to shop around and see if another one will!
I’ve been wanting to do a vintage hymn for a while but didn’t want to make a frame or buy a frame, but this is definitely doable and it looks great! Thanks for sharing!
Hi!
I would like to do this with His Eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me. Just not sure if I should add some colorful sparrows or leave it as is?