Buying the Best Ocean Art Prints for Coastal Cottage Decor
- Vintage fish print provides lively decor for a children’s room
Coastal cottage style is one of the most popular decorating styles due to its down-to-earth warmth combined with the exotic feel of an endless summer vacation.
And in almost every cottage decor magazine you’re guaranteed to see a liberal use of ocean-themed nature art prints.
Whether it’s a pair of black and white over-sized starfish prints in the dining room or a casual grouping of framed pages from a vintage field guide to shells lined up on a bathroom shelf, ocean art prints can enhance any room in your home.
The highly colorful oceanography prints, combining all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures such as squid, sea cucumbers and other crustaceans, work especially well in children’s rooms.
But where can you find prints of fish, undersea-life and oceanscapes at a reasonable cost? One source is ebay: search on the term “Vintage fish prints.”
The prints are usually colored bookplates from actual original books, so they may be printed on both sides. Or, the prints may be digitally enhanced from the originals and re-printed with high-quality modern inks on acid-free paper.
Because the prints started out as book pages, they are never very large. Sizes range from about 5 x 7 inches to 12 x 16 inches. Some illustrations covered a two-page spread and may leave a crease in the middle.
Using today’s high-quality scanners and printers, you may be able to scan the original print and size it up (or down) to fit the desired frame size (and because they are vintage prints, no copyright laws should apply).
Most unframed prints sell at a very reasonable cost of between $5 and $40 and are shipped in squash-proof envelopes.
Copyright 2011 by Holly B. Martin. All Rights Reserved.