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I've been planning to put up a gallery wall around our TV but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on prints or vintage art. I saw that you could use mod podge to turn glossy prints into faux oil paintings and I had to give it a shot. Its super inexpensive and I absolutely love the results!
First, you’ll want to find some public domain images that you like. I used the MET website as they have a huge gallery and you can sort by public domain images and other categories.
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Once I had my images, I sent them to print in sizes that would match frames I had bought at the thrift store. I used Walgreens but you can use Walmart or other photo printing services. If you do use Walgreens, I recommend waiting for a holiday as they always have sales going on at those times so the prints are much cheaper.
Next, you’ll need matte mod podge and a brush. This is the fun part and you can do it however you’d like!
I’ve done a couple of techniques. I’ve done some prints where I dabbed on the mod podge and tried to mimic the brush strokes of the original painting directly onto the print in thick strokes.
I’ve also done others were I did a base coat of mod podge and then mimicked the brush strokes on another layer on top.
The only issue I found with the first method was that it’s hard to see where you’ve mod podged as it begins to dry so I found I missed a couple of places. If you do miss a place and go back to add mod podge over it, make sure the mod dodge is still wet. If you go over dry mod podge, you will clearly see where you placed the second coat of mod podge so you will have to do another layer on the whole print so that it's not visible.
Otherwise, it's a very forgiving process and you can do as little or as many coats and as thin or as thick as you’d like to get the desired texture and look. You can also use different sized brushes to get different brush strokes. Here's a close up of the texture from one of my prints but like I said, it'll depend on how thick you brush it on and the strokes you use.
