7 ways to make printable artwork look great

I've been printing a few new pieces for my walls lately, so I thought I'd share some simple tips on how to make printables look more like "real" art for your home.

1. Make sure your printer has ink

Obvious, yes, but important. If your ink cartridge is dying, your print will look like it's dying too.

2. Adjust your printer settings

Make sure your print quality is set to "Best" (or equivalent). If it's a black-ink-only print, set it to "Grayscale" and "Black cartridge only." In my experience, printing black with both the black and color cartridges doesn't look as sharp.

3. Don't enlarge the printable

Most printables are designed to print at a certain size. Enlarging them will turn them into a pixely mess. Stick to the size the printable is supposed to be and you won't have any problems.

For PDF printables, it's important to check a couple of settings in Adobe Acrobat to make sure you aren't unintentionally scaling up. In the printer settings, make sure Page Scaling is set to "None" and Auto-Rotate and Center is unchecked.

4. Just say no to standard white office paper

Printing on anything other than plain white paper will elevate your artwork from printout to print. Your choices are endless: card stock, textured cardstock, patterned paper, colored or kraft paper, photo paper, etc. You can buy single sheets of fancy paper for well under a dollar at any craft store.

5. Send it out

One of the great things about printable artwork is that you don't even need to leave the house to get something up on the walls. But if what your printing requires a lot of ink, or your printer doesn't work well, it might be cheaper to send your prints to a copy shop and have them printed on a color laser printer. An 8.5" x 11" color laser print usually costs around $1. Something to consider.

6. Treat it like "real" art -- frame it

Everything looks better behind glass. It's a fact.

7. Make it the sidekick, not the star

Printables are a great way to get art on your walls for cheap or free. But if all you have on display are printables, well, that might look a little thin. You've got to mix them up. Pair a printable with other types of artwork, and let its neighbors give it more credence.

See my collection of printables >>

Free artwork spotlight: WPA Poster Archive at Library of Congress

Source: Information - Brookfield Zoo

One of my very early blog posts was about a piece of artwork from the WPA Poster archive at the Library of Congress. I'm sure that just about two percent of you were reading this blog at the time, so I thought I'd do another post about it.

The archive is a great source for high-resolution vintage artwork you can print and display at home for free!

Source: Once upon a time / Keep your teeth clean

I spent some time sorting through the entire database (oh yes, I went through all 900+ images), and I'm presenting a few of my favorites in this post.

The Library of Congress does not own the prints, but they do state that they have "no known restrictions," making them free to print and use without being in violation of any copyrights.

"Publication and other forms of distribution: Posters in this collection were made by artists working for the Works Projects Administration, a "New Deal" program of the U.S. Government. There are no known restrictions on the use of these posters."

More info on this page: Work Projects Administration Posters Rights and Restrictions Information

Source: See America / Protect your parks

In some cases, you may need to crop the scanned images and others could use some cleaning up in Photoshop, but it's a real treasure-trove. For best results, download the high-resolution TIFF image file and print on card stock or other nice paper.

Source: Grow it yourself

I also created a Pinterest board with a bunch more for easy browsing. There are many great posters in the archive, but there are also a lot of mediocre ones. (And an inordinate amount of posters aiming to curb syphilis.) So if you don't have time to dig through the giant Library of Congress database, take a look at my Pinterest board instead.

Stay tuned for another post soon about where I'm using one of these prints in my own house.

Sources: Exhibition / Pet Show