Free Animal Prints

This may be the most drawn out nursery reveal ever, but I promise it'll all be shared soon.  Today I wanted to show you how I got these animal prints for next to nothing.  We have one large wall in the nursery that was pretty much a blank canvas and I knew I wanted to fill it with a gallery wall of some sort.  I went back and forth on how I wanted to do it, but settled on the idea of doing eight identical frames to keep things looking streamlined.  I found the frames at Homegoods, but these (affiliate link) look similar.

  Then I had to decide what to put in them.  Since I had 8 frames to fill I knew I didn't want to spend a  lot.  After a little searching I came across The Biodiversity Library and it was like a dream come true.  I could easily spend hours searching their site looking at all the beautiful old pictures.  The best part is they are all free!  You can download the pictures and print them however you would like.  The best/cheapest way I found to do this was to print them at the UPS store.  Just choose copies/quick prints and then pick your size.  I needed 11 x 14 so I just chose the 11 x 17 paper and cut off the excess.  They run specials often so be sure to check for a coupon code.  Each print cost me less than $2 which is a steal for something this size.  The paper is pretty thin, just like regular copy paper so you just have to handle them carefully until you get them in the frames.   

When it comes to searching for different images, the best/easiest way to do that is to check out their flickr stream.  You can scroll through hundreds of different images and then just download the ones you want.  I found the images I used here and here.  I removed the background and made it white in photoshop for a more cohesive look.  I do love the look of the vintage background as well though.  The hardest part is narrowing it down and picking the images.  There are seriously so many good ones!  And they have more than just animals.  There are tons of flowers, plants, sea life, pretty much anything you could think of.  I actually found the prints for my guest room here as well.  You can find that post here.  

  

And I should add that this post is NOT sponsored in any way.  I just like to share a good thing when I find it.  So, I hope you enjoy this amazing resource as much as I have and if you spend the better part of your afternoon browsing their site, don't say I didn't warn you :)