Vintage Botanical Prints DIY for Fall Kitchen Decor

Try this vintage style botanical prints DIY
for delicious fall kitchen decor.
Fruit designs on watercolor paper
with our fabulous faux torn edge technique.

 

Every kitchen needs to get a little fall on the walls about now

even if you just tape a few colored leaves above your sink.

This DIY brings a little vintage, a little color and some classical-cum-farmhouse art to your space.

Plus we’ll show you our torn-edge paper technique we just invented and can’t wait to show you.

It’s so close to the real deckled edge you won’t believe your eyes.

 

 

Vintage Botanical Prints DIY

What you need:

1. Botanical prints. We got ours at graphicsfairy.com.
2. Watercolor paper. Ours is Strathmore #140, 11″ x 15″.
3. Inkjet printer. Ours is a Canon Photo printer that can print wider paper than 8.5″. If you don’t have a printer, create Jpeg or PDF files to take to a commercial printer. Or you may purchase them already printed in our Kitchen Shop.
4. Ruler, Exacto knife, self-healing mat, bone-folder (or if you don’t have one, like me, use a letter opener).

 

How to create your botanical prints:

 

PHOTOSHOP:

1. Open a page with 300 pixels, RGB color, and white background.
2. Create a vintage colored background.
3. Copy and paste the fruit prints from thegraphicsfairy.com onto your work page.
4. Erase backgrounds and position each fruit on the background.
5. Save a copy of each of the 4 fruits with backgrounds as a flat hi-res Jpeg.
6. Create a new screen with a 5″ x 6.5″ 300 pixels RGB on white page.
7. Transfer and position the fruit prints to this page.

 

Now go to a Word Processor program, such as Microsoft Publisher.

 

 

PUBLISHER:

1. Open a 11″ x 14″ page in portrait orientation.
2. Position the prints on the page as shown. Make sure they are a little larger than 5″ x 6.5″ so there’s room for trimming to the right size.
3. NOTE: A shortcut to transfer a picture from PhotoShop to Publisher, since Adobe and Microsoft don’t play well together on my computer, I first paste it into the Microsoft Paint program, then copy and paste it into Publisher.
4. Print your pics on watercolor paper.

 

Finishing.

1. Score the edges from the front side of each print with the Xacto knife. By score we mean just a shallow cut, not all the way through.
2. Fold each edge up toward the front of the print, and press the crease with the bone folder. Reverse the fold to the back and press with the folder again.
3. Carefully tear along the fold.
4. Do this on all four sides of each print.
5. Heat about 1/4 cup of water and add a tea bag. Let steep 5 minutes. Squeeze the bag slightly to use as your “watercolor brush.”
6. Antique the edges of the prints, and blob and streak tea color here and there to make the prints look old.

 

 

 

Where will you display your vintage botanical prints?

Until next time,

Love, Kim & Dorothy