inspired: 2 beautiful books to frame

What started out as a way to save a few bucks while still adding a little drama to the big, open wall in my entry years ago quickly turned into one of my favorite ways to make a big impact without breaking the bank – framing pages from a book!  It’s also a great way to add drama to an awkward spot (like the toilet room in my bathroom).  While it’s always difficult for me to rip out that first page, the end result is so worth it!  The best part is that it’s easy to find inexpensive, pre-cut mats for pages from even the largest coffee table books, which means you can fit them into standard frames and skip the hefty cost of custom framing.  Here are three books from which I’ve framed pages in my own home in the past:

I picked up The Spirit of Sailing years ago for three dollars at a book store that was going out of business; it sat on our bookshelf until we moved into our current house and I got a wild hair to emulate a bathroom I’d seen in Steven Gambrel’s portfolio.  What once felt like a coffin, the toilet room in our bathroom now boasts photographer Michael Kahn’s gorgeous black and white sailing shots in simple black frames.  What a difference it makes!  There’s no natural light in this little space and it’s barely big enough for me to close the door without hitting my knees, but it’s one of my favorite places in the house now:

One of the easiest ways to bring the beach to your house is with art so, when I found this conchology book on clearance a few years back, I knew the images inside would make for a stunning grid gallery wall in my entry way.  Placing them in simple see-through frames (that I scored for 50% off at Michael’s) and taking them all the way to the crown made quite the impact for four years until I took them down to re-do the entry last Fall:

 What are some of your favorite, inexpensive art favorites?