Sherry Tyra: Hi! I am Sherry Tyra and I would like to welcome you to my monkeysee.

com video. Today, we are talking about low-cost artwork that looks great. In this section, we are going to talk about cutting and measuring and placing your artwork within the frame.

Now, one of the secrets of coming up with really creative artwork is thinking outside the box, looking for places to find artwork that you would not necessarily think about. One of my best secrets is using wallpaper and what I do is I go to my local paint and wallpaper store and I tell them, I would like to get some books from you. If you have any books that are outdated, that are pass, that you want to get rid of, let me know and I give them my phone number.

Last time I did this, I ended up with ten wallpaper books, the great stuff to choose from. They are happy to get rid of them because they just throw them away anyway. This book here was a book on different grass clothes and as you can see there is lots of different patterns and textures in this book and I thought this is great. So, I actually put together a little montage of these different grass clothes and you could see it right here on the wall. I set them in different colors and textures and put some horizontal, some vertical and that gave a real interesting look in that frame. This actually is one of my favorite books that I have ever received; this is a mural book and not only does it have great wallpaper in it, it also has wonderful borders and there are these little pictures that they have throughout, showing what the wallpaper is going to look like on the walls.

These pictures are actually pretty standard sizes; they can fit in frames themselves. If you look, I have taken, like this wallpaper right here and I have taken sections of it and printed it in these frames here to give you this beautiful floral prints. These pictures here were actually borders, sections of a border that I took in frames. As you can see, they are wonderful; they look like professionally printed prints and they frame up beautifully and the nice thing about it is the wallpaper gives this great texture, almost looks like a needlepoint. Now, I would like to talk to you about how to determine what part of the inspiration piece that you would like to print. So, I started out with this mural book that has these great borders in it and I love the sailboat border. So, first of all I am going to cut the border out of the book using my straightedge; again, it is sharp, be careful, kind of lay it down, pull it out of the book, put the book aside.

I have this great little piece here and so you take your matting from your frame and you just kind of play with it. Figure out what section of this print that you like the most and that you want to highlight in your frame. So, let us see, I could do this big sailboat over here, but I think I am cutting out some stuff over here; so if I move it over, take in the lighthouse here, looks like I have got a great spot. So all I do is I hold it there in place, grab a piece of tape, flip it over and fix some tape on it, just to anchor it and you play with it, get it straight and again flip it over; put a piece of tape and then take your scissors and just trim away the excess. It is just as easy as that; there is absolutely no measuring involved; just a matter of what looks good in the frame. Take your frame; put your prints and it's held in place by the tape, just put it in the frame, figure out which is the top and which is the bottom because I always do that, put the wrong end up; take your backing on, put it into place, like that and walla! You have professional looking art to hang on your wall. Next, we are going to talk about looking for other sources of inspiration.