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How to double your art collection using things you already own
Two of the highest impact items you can have in your house are art and books. Whilst books can be added into your collection at a couple of pounds a pop from your local charity shop, bringing art into your house is considerably more expensive. How to solve that problem? Get creative!
Of course, there's something romantic about the idea of investing in a budding young artist's work (though for that we suggest heading to our guide to the best sources for stylish and affordable prints), but the reality is most of us can't afford to do so. Another alternative is purchasing cards lovely enough to frame, which can be quite effective displayed in a triptych, but – variety being the spice of life – you need art of all shapes and sizes to suit different spaces. To that end, we've compiled a handy guide to help inspire you to see everyday items as the artworks they are.
As our style director Ruth Sleightholme advises, “A tip is just to make sure you have multiples of whatever you choose. Once something is a set, it becomes a series for display. I have a series of stitching instruction cards from the 1950s and, because they are all the same colour and there is 30 of them, they will make a great, big, framed display.”
Many restaurants have beautiful menus. Think London-based illustrator John Broadley's designs on the Quo Vadis menus (in fact, your writer has a one of the Quo Vadis menus framed in her flat), or St. Barts' wax sealed one. Framed, they make a lovely memento from a first date, or a particularly special birthday.
In the same vein, the bill can serve as a great keepsake. Jauntily placed in the bottom corner of a large frame, in a colourful mount, it could look rather playful. Of course, if it was a particularly expensive meal, you might prefer to forget the bill altogether.
Most people have piles and piles of birthday cards shoved in the back of drawers, or buried underneath their socks. Why not make the most of one from a loved one and put it on display? That way you'll be reminded of it every time you pass it, rather than just when you do a sock clear out.
Plenty of households, particularly ones with children, have scraps of card lying around. Pre-cut into weird and wonderful shapes, all you need to do is figure out your composition and glue them down. Think Henri Matisse's ‘The Snail’ and you're away.
Some people might see this as slightly sacrilegious, but if you have a book of fairytales you no longer read, why not carefully cut one or two out and frame them? You'll appreciate them more than you would buried 300 pages deep in a book you never pick up.
As above, some people may take issue with this idea, but why not head to your local charity shop and pick up a beautiful hard-backed art book. Set about it with a scalpel and for £20-30 you could get about 50 prints that all form part of a unified series.
Chocolates are often packaged in beautiful casing. Why not lift off the front of the box with a scalpel. This can be a great way to create a keepsake out of a shared chocolate box.
Unless you've been proactive and bound your important recipes into a book or folder, chances are they're just folded up somewhere in your kitchen. Why not pop a special one into a frame with a colourful mount. You can hang it next to the oven, so you can refer to it when you need.
We might be biased, but many magazine shoots are frame worthy. Carefully cut a particularly lovely fashion, or interiors shoot out using a scalpel and display it in a contrasting frame.
Former House & Garden decoration coordinator, Elena Smintina, suggested a more ‘romantic decorator’ might like to save a keepsake like a kiss mark on a napkin. Alternatively, a stylish cocktail napkin from a wedding or restaurant would make a nice centrepiece on a contrasting mount.
Finally, why not collected some pretty stems from your garden, park, or surrounding countryside. You can dry them and then mount them on some pretty card.
Plenty of smart restaurants and hotels will have custom matchboxes sitting at the reception or on the bar. Collect enough of these and you can create a charming display in a box frame.
As many of us on the House & Garden staff hoard fabric samples, we are always looking for creative ways to use them. One such recommendation is to frame them, using a contrasting mount to set them off. You can also use the fabric samples themselves as mounts, providing a pretty patterned border for a more simple piece of art in the centre. You can also apply that ‘scrappy’ technique to old wrapping paper. Our final tip, is to use frames much bigger than the art itself for a striking effect. It'll double the size of the art, meaning more wall coverage for less, whilst attractively drawing attention to the piece itself.
