{Repurpose Universe}: Owl art and two free printables

I went to the Craftsmen's Classic over the weekend. It's a juried craft show where most of the artists are from the east coast. While I was there, I met a talented photographer who owns Slonina photography. I purchased a great matted owl photo and he now has a home in my office, watching over me as I work.

I love owl art, especially around this time of year. Owls have the most piercing eyes and they just seem to be able to look inside you.

A few weeks back, I made some owl prints for my space in a local antiques shop. They're extremely simple to do, and you can repurpose some frames that you already have or purchase them from discount retailers (Home Goods, Marshalls, ROSS, TJ Maxx). Whenever I'm in any store, I run to the frame aisle. Sometimes you can find really great deals on clearance items. Buy what you can and save them for a project like the one I'm about to show you.

First, I scanned in one of my vintage images. I also highly recommend The Graphics Fairy if you need copyright free vintage graphics. I won't get in to copyright here, but make sure the image you're using is your own, you have permission, or it's copyright free. I'm using Audubon prints and encyclopedia images from the 1800's and all images are copyright free.

In Adobe PhotoShop Elements, I made the background transparent, removed the words, and trimmed up the image. Next, I digitally added a coffee stained high resolution textural background.

Next I resized the image. I had an 8 x 10 frame and wanted a 1" card stock border around all sides, so my owl image was 6"x8". I printed the image out on my ink jet printer (or you can get a laser print made) and used dimensional foam tape so the owl image would sit up a little above the background, creating a shadowbox effect { shown below }.

That was really it! Quick, framed spooky Halloween art.

Aside from putting the pictures on top of a cardstock "mat", I also used dictionary pages and made some pictures of bones for Halloween { shown below }. I played around with the sizes of the pictures and mats, but found I liked the brown card stock and dictionary pages best.