Inexpensive Subway Art

I've always been a little afraid of wall art for my home. Aside from family pictures, I never know what to hang up on the walls. Plus, seems like most wall hangings, especially the ones I love, are expensive. Thank you Pinterest, once again, for showing me the light and giving me ideas for some money saving DIY wall art. The first wall art I tackled was the phonetic alphabet for G's room. His room is all aviation and airplanes and so when I saw the Pinterest one (on the left) I knew I wanted something similar. The secret to making this DIY subway art affordable is using Staples' option for engineering prints. At $1.99 for a 2x3 print, it's a steal. Mind you, the engineering prints only come in black and white, but that's perfect for the subway art look. 

For the airplane and phonetic alphabet, I found a black outline of an old looking airplane on Google, copy and pasted it into Publisher and then added the words in white on top of it. Whatever design or wording you do, make the background black and the wording white. Save as a JPG file, upload to Staples and order an engineering print. I then cut out the airplane (because the background of it was white, I wanted grey) and used double-sided tape to adhere to a piece of grey poster board. The frame was $5.99 from Goodwill (I sanded down the ugly brown and spray painted black). Cut the poster board to size to fit the frame, add to the frame and there you have it. Instant subway art for under $10. 

The second piece is subway art using lyrics to one of my favorite Mumford and Sons' songs, "After the Storm." I did the basically the same thing; in Publisher, I created a document with a black background and overlaid it with the words in white. I played with the fonts, changing them up line by line to give it that full subway art look. I saved it as a JPEG, uploaded to Staples and ordered as an engineering print. I then took a piece of plywood, cut to the size of the print (in my case 2x3) and painted the edges of the plywood black. I then used mod podge to adhere the print to the wood and also added two layers of modge podge on top of the print. I took a fine sand paper and very lightly sanded over the whole thing to give it a rustic, vintage look. With the print, mod podge and plywood, this one cost under $10 as well.

You can find full directions on DIY subway art at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar.