This chair makeover features how to fix old chairs. Fix loose chair backs with a simple pipe clamp and transform a chair with new upholstery. These simple chair updates will give new life to your old chairs and won’t break the bank or take a lot of your time. Learn how to update a chair with this tutorial!
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Don’t throw your old, faded patio umbrella away! Learn how to paint a faded patio umbrella while reading about my patio umbrella makeover.
Sometimes, we are so quick to toss the old and just buy new. I think that can be the better option but isn’t always. For outdoor patio furniture, cushions, umbrellas, etc., they fade over time. Tossing all the patio equipment every year because of sun exposure just isn’t feasible over here. Learning how to make our fabrics more sun resistant and reviving the old pieces are in the budget though.
So, if you have a faded patio umbrella, let me tell you, you are in luck today. I’m walking you through the process of how to paint that umbrella and even sharing how long you can expect it to last.
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Whether you have a landscape art picture or a photo of your kid that you want as a poster print, getting engineer prints printed is easy! In today’s post, you’ll hear about how to use Staples Engineering Prints for large scale artwork in your home.
I’ve used Staples poster printing a few different times, so today, I thought I’d share about my experience.
Years ago, I had seen so many people using the engineering prints as poster prints and photo prints that I decided to try it.
Before I jump in on how to print your pictures at Staples, let’s talk for a second about picture quality. I will try not to get on my high horse here… As a prior childrens’ photographer, I hated when clients/families/friends used crappy printing methods. The image gets distorted with both color and quality. There are some things that are fine when buying “off brand,” but pictures are not one of them. There are good printers out there that don’t cost a whole lot more than Walmart, Walgreens, etc. but produce better-looking, longer-lasting prints. For nice photo prints at a good price, I recommend Nations Photo Lab. I used them when I was printing square photos for my gallery wall when I cut my own picture mats.
All that said, sometimes a cheap print is appropriate or creates a unique/interesting look. When Greyson was younger, I used the Staples Blueprint printing method on this photo. Let me explain more…
The Staples Engineering Prints are black and white. For Greyson’s room, I thought a black and white, extra large print would be a nice change to all the crazy, primary colors. I also thought his room could pull off a fun, grainy poster print of him without looking too cheap. Because, come on people, these “photos” are cheap.
All I’m saying is, before you decide to print a whole bunch of poster prints, you should think about the quality difference between an actual photo printing lab and the engineer prints. You may decide that the engineer prints are perfect for your project and, if so, yay!
Ok, let’s get started with what you need to do if you decide to go with the poster printing.
Decide on your frame so you can determine print size.
I started with this extremely ugly picture (but hey, it was free to me)!
The frame size wasn’t an exact match to the engineer print sizing (even though there are a few different engineer print sizes to pick from). My frame size was 31 x 42.
Decide What Size Poster Print Works Best For Your Frame
Staples Blueprints vary by price from $2-$8 based on the printing size.
Currently they offer the following sizes for engineer prints:
For my frame, the largest Staples Blueprint size was 36 x 48. This worked the best but still wasn’t a perfect size match. To make this work, I sized the image in Photoshop to 31 x 42 and then extended the canvas to 36 x 48. From here, I had two options for getting the photo printed.
You can either send your file digitally to Staples using their online platform or you can go to a store and drop your file off using a USB drive.
From using Staples in the past, I know it’s easier to stop by the store. Their online system is bit hard to navigate, so if you have time to just drop by the store, that’s what I’d recommend.
When the image printed at Staples, it printed with a large gray mat (the canvas extension) around it. When I got home, I just cut the gray mat off and I had a print that was perfect for my frame.
Overall, I think the engineering prints are pretty great quality for the price! Here’s a close-up of the original photo that I had printed, so you can look at the grain of the paper.
You can see the grain in the face and some of the flat black parts. This is not grain from the camera, it’s grain from the print quality.
I switched on my 60mm macro lens to show you even further what it really looks like.
The price is amazing for this size of print. For the right photo, I think printing as an engineer print is a great way to go.
Greyson has grown out of having his fireman poster print up, so I recently did the whole engineer print again with a space ship.
I could have trimmed the print just a bit better, as you can see, there’s a bit of a ripple on the right side. Oops!
If you are looking for more ideas for your walls we recently used wood-look poster frames in our hallway for a travel gallery wall. I could easily see the engineer prints in those wood frames.
When choosing wall art for your home, there are so many options to choose from. Do you want to buy art prints online and have them framed locally? Are you interested in buying original art and, if so, where do you buy it? I’ve been asked to talk about how I pick wall art and, hopefully, that will inspire you when you are looking to buy art for your home.
I recently was asked if I had ever done a post about the specific art pieces that I have in my home and, shockingly, the answer was, no. I’ve often shared pieces of art that I love when I’ve shared room reveals but I’ve never shared the pieces that I own. So today, I’m rounding up the pieces that I have, how I’ve picked them and where to buy the art for you to bookmark and save for when you are ready to purchase a few pieces of your own.
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How do you manage dust on your open kitchen shelving? Do your dishes get dirty on your floating shelves? Today, I’m chatting all about cleaning kitchen shelves and how we manage dust and keeping our dishes clean.
I’m kinda like a dinosaur with my kitchen shelves. You see, I’ve had them for almost three years and that was just before the time that they got popular. We used them while we were still renovating the kitchen and have used them consistently since the kitchen renovation back in 2016. Of course, after living with something for that long, you develop habits for it. So, I thought I’d share what I do to keep our shelving looking nice. It’s not hard. Promise!
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ashley at biggerthanthethreeofus.com
