Photos to Easy Art

I absolutely love using photos in my decorating.  I adore my beautiful children and have their pictures displayed around the house.  However, sometimes you need something else on your walls to dress up a space.  I have my own mat cutter to help frame artwork, but sometimes I just need something really cheap and personal.  Enter my camera!  I still don't have a nice digital SLR, but you can still get some great shots with just a digital point-n-shoot.  I took some great pictures with this camera while in Italy with my husband. 

Now try uploading your photos to this Japanese website (http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds) and watch them be generated into an old fashion-looking photo, scratches and coloring included! The page comes up in Japanese, but in the top, right corner is a tab to switch it to English.

How cool are those?! I just changed the ones in my bedroom from color to these old, sepia ones.

Now, to get really carried away, go to http://www.picnik.com/ and use their free effects tools to change up photos.  I took a picture of my NY hometown train station:

Look how you can soften it, add a vignette around the borders, and make colors pop!

Here's another enhanced photo I did:

How about that gorgeous sky color you can get?  Do a whole grouping of photos to look like this awesome lady's display:

(see http://www.tarawhitney.com/ for more of her gorgeous photos.)

See how she combines large, architectural pieces, with large, cropped children's photos? Use pops of color, vingettes. and unusual angles! Use clip frames like she did (from IKEA) or print out on canvas at Costco or even modge podge your enlarged prints onto boards.

I did just plain Black and White in my 1/2 bath downstairs of our trip to Paris:

Have fun.  Be on the lookout for my next post: "More Inexpensive Art Ideas."