Large Scale Art From An Unexpected Source

I am always looking for unique art projects and interesting pieces because I don’t want to just have random things hanging on my walls – I want my home to be a reflection of who lives here, to be meaningful in some way, to remind us of a place we love, to stir an emotion or to simply strike our fancy in some big way. While I still love gallery walls, sometimes a wall is just calling out for one large statement piece of art in a room like this beauty from Elle Decor. I have made fairly large art pieces before like the DIY mounted nautical map and  block poster art for Peter’s room. Now I am working on a piece for my One Room Challenge family room project. For this room I wanted something really big and different that wouldn’t kill the budget.

A couple years ago I saw such a clever idea for creating large scale art and have been dying to do it ever since – the DIY Octopus Art by House of Jade Interiors (formerly 6th Street Design School) that used an Urban Outfitters shower curtain, stretched onto a wooden frame. What makes this idea so fabulous is that thanks to this magical little thing called the internet, you can find literally tens of thousands of pictures – abstract art, typography, drawings, maps, photographs – printed in a large scale on fabric at an affordable price. I love the idea of using fabric for large scale art because it is easy to manipulate. It doesn’t have to be mounted onto a substrate like a large paper print or photograph, and it’s hard to ruin.

Most of the artsy shower curtains I found are made of polyester fabric (the Urban Outfitters cotton shower curtains being the exception in this roundup). The polyester concerned me because I wouldn’t want the fabric to have a sheen to it or look cheap when hanging smack dab in the middle of my house. This weekend I checked out shower curtains at Bed, Bath & Beyond that are made of polyester, and unless you touch the fabric, you really can’t tell what the material is from a foot or two away, so as far as polyester fabric for this application I think it would be fine.

I came across so many cool and interesting designs to use for a project like this, I thought I’d share them with you! Here are a few that caught my eye.

One more fun idea – take your own photo and have it made into custom printed shower curtain to use for oversized art!!! (this was the cheapest source I could find at $64.99)  I looked into having a photo blow up and printed via Spoonflower but I couldn’t figure out how to make the image large. I’m venturing a guess that you’d need a high resolution photo to blow up. It would be such a fun way to personalize this project!!

Wish me luck as I try to nail down a design to use for my ORC. I’ll be back on Thursday with an update on finishing up The Last 20%!