Framed botanicals

I know: Monica, you need to get your seasons straight, right? I’m celebrating Spring in November because I couldn’t wait four months to share these beauties. Besides, red and green makes it almost Christmasy. I’m sure you recognize this window that used to be a mirror. I decided I had too many mirrors in my apartment and not enough art. And one can never have too much white paint, I say. The botanical illustrations are from Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, a four-volume German book published in 1887. Botanicus.org scanned the nearly 300 drawings and made them available to download for free! © 1995-2009 Missouri Botanical Garden.

How to: Window frame and (free!) botanical illustrations

Browser window to download

1. Choose your desired botanical images and download them here (or buy prints here). I chose illustrations that have red in them because they went with my decor, but there are many gorgeous illustrations in a rainbow of colors as well.

2. Open your downloaded illustrations in a photo-editing software program (such as Photoshop) to resize and/or crop the images to fit your picture frames.

3. If you have a high quality printer, print your images. If not, save your files onto a flash drive or CD and take them to a photocopying service. I paid $1.78 for each 11×17-inch print at FedEx Office. Use a paper trimmer to trim to size.

4. Frame each print and hang them on the wall. Easy peasy.

For a step-by-step tutorial on painting and hanging a window frame, click here.