Modern Bird style art on the cheep

did you see what I did there? cheep/cheap. ok good.

[insert long apology/explanation about how I'm a horrible blogger and almost killed my blog but you shouldn't worry because I'm back (with a vengeance).]

Since we moved into our house in April, our mantel has plagued me. Don't get me wrong, having a fireplace/mantel is one of my favorite things about our house - I was just at a loss as to what to put up there. I kept wracking my brain/stalking Gordmans, Garden Ridge, Hobby Lobby and the like. In addition to stalking home stores, I was also stalking Apartment Therapy and happened to see this post about creating your own digital art. This seemed perfect for us since I was having a hard time finding artwork I liked in stores. I have also been wanting to add a picture of our family to the space, but since our family is really just Todd and I - I would feel a little silly with a giant photograph of us up on the mantel.

When reading the article, I fell in love with the style of Modern Bird Studios. But I did not fall in love with the price tag. So, after looking at their work, I thought I'd try my hand at something similar. So here is my take on a Modern Bird style picture.

Here is a picture from their website:

 They offer other styles but the one I liked the best was high contrast - black with a saturated color

So I took one of our photos (the one I have at the top of my blog actually) and using Picassa changed the photo to black and white. Then I adjusted the contrast so that it was clearly only black and white NO GRAY.

Here is what I got:

Then, still in Picassa, I used the tint option under the "effects" tab. When you tint your picture, you can choose any color of the rainbow. Since it was autumn, the brick on our fireplace has sort of a yellow tone and our walls are green, I chose to go with a warm orange color. Normally I would have gone for green, but I have to realize that not everything in my house can be green, brown, or yellow!

Here is what the picture looked like with the color added:

I took a bit of a risk since I wasn't entirely sure what color it would print and went ahead and uploaded it to PictureFrames.com 

This site will allow you to upload your photos and prints them on canvas for you. I chose the gallery wrapped option, but you could also have them frame it. I know there are many other sites that offer similar services. But after looking a a few this seemed to be the best deal at the time and I am very pleased with the final product!

Here is a picture of the real deal!

This is also a sneak peek at our finished fall mantel! I will post about our fall mantel and fall touches soon!