Bathroom Wall Art and Free Printables

Dress up your powder room with some beautiful bathroom wall art! We’re offering free printables from four fantastic artists: seaweed illustrations by Anna Atkins, seashells and seahorses by Ernst Haeckel, vintage postcard drawings by Leo Fontan and Paris boulevard etchings by A.-P Martial.

If we had to choose one DIY project that we are so proud of, both Greg and I would tell you that it is our guest bathroom renovation. It is our biggest undertaking thus far. We did everything in there ourselves: no contractors nor any help from others. And it was the very first big project that my babes initiated! I know what you’re thinking – I was as shocked as you are!! LOL. And while he was at it, he even started my famous pajama counter with that renovation! hahaha 😀

Again, if we had to choose one DIY project that we are so over and don’t even want to remember, hands down it also would be our guest bathroom renovation! I have to say, we both learned a lot from that one: my babes learned learned to keep shush keep calm and carry on with the video game before mistakenly initiating a huge project. As for me, I learned to think twice before asking him to hang anything on the walls! hahaha 😀

Anyway… now you know why I waited a year before even talking about the bathroom wall art, LOL. But last weekend I felt like those walls were nagging at me [now you know how I feel, -Greg], so I decided to do something about it. After digging into my frame pile in our basement, I found these simple wooden frames. Another Put & Take find and I think the perfect set for the job!

The plan was to paint them white and put some coastal or nautical style prints in them. So first, I took the hardware out.

As the frames had a lot of dings and scratches all around, I had to fix them before painting. Using wood filler and a putty knife, I filled all the imperfections. Once the wood filler dried, I sanded it down and the frames were ready for painting.

Next, I started spray painting them with flat white. After the first two coats, I realized that flat white spray paint wasn’t as white as the Behr Ultra White (our board and batten and trim color). So I prepared some homemade chalk paint in Ultra White color and painted the frames with 2 coats of my homemade chalk paint. Once I finished painting, I sanded the frames slightly to get a nice smooth surface. After sanding, I cleaned the dust off of the frames with a damp cheesecloth and waxed them with Fiddes & Sons clear wax.

Here is a little note about this wax: I used it for the first time on our guest bathroom vanity and I fell in love with it. This stuff is goooood!!! Greg also agrees with me on this one: when I gave my can of Fiddes & Sons to him for his faux card catalog cabinet, he never returned it back to me, and said “yes, it’s a keeper, you’d better get yourself another one.” LOL. Typical! He always steals my waxes and brushes, and then bitches at me when his tools start cruising around the house. It’s not like I taught them how to grow legs and walk. [Why would they need to walk when you carry them everywhere? -Greg] I have to say though, his tools just love to play hide and seek with him, hahaha 😀 [Keep it up, woman. Remember who cooks your meals. -Greg] So anyway… if you are looking for a good furniture wax, Fiddes & Sons clear wax is a great one (and inexpensive too!) Now let’s get back to the our guest bathroom wall art.

While I only needed three single printable pieces for our guest bathroom wall, as usual I went above and beyond, and prepared 4 sets of great guest bathroom printables for all of us (which you’ll find at the end of this post) 😀 The first set has Anna Atkins’ seaweed photographs which I really love. I printed three seaweeds with our large-format printer (Canon i8720 Printer), then hung the frames using my easy-peasy frame-hanging method. And that was that!

Here is our guest bathroom wall art! What do you think?

Not bad, eh? Simple, yet perfect for that space!

My babes had a really hard time trying to photograph that wall, and of course the glare in the glass made it almost impossible to get a good picture. So I had to take the glass out for the this final one.

I really love how this trio looks! The only thing I might change in the future is the frame size. The frames I painted were 11×14, and as I didn’t want to spend any money, I made these do for now. But after preparing the mockup picture below, I kind of talked myself into getting bigger frames with white mats. Hahaha 😀 I know… sometimes I’m my own worst enemy. [Yeah, mine, too, lol! Oh, crap, she heard me. RUN! -Greg]

White frames with white mats look way better for these seaweed printables. Oh by the way, before I forget – I prepared 10 seaweed printables, in 3 different shades of dark blue backgrounds. So you’ll find a total of 30 of these seaweeds in each size (8.5×11, 11×14, 11×17, 12×18 and 16×20 inches) that we’re sharing in The VIP Patch.

The second set of bathroom wall art printables includes seashells and seahorses picked from Ernst Haeckel’s illustrations. I couldn’t decide which color looked the best, so I ended up designing these seashells and seahorses in three different colors: off-white, light blue and blue. All are high-resolution and have a white background, so you can easily resize and print them to fit any size frame you’d like. You can find these seashells and seahorses under the “Coastal & Nautical” tab in The VIP Patch.

If you are into French style decor, then you might consider adorning your guest bathroom walls with these vintage postcard illustrations by Leo Fontan. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the high resolution versions of these vintage risqué leg illustrations anywhere online. Therefore the 6 printables I prepared for the third set only have three sizes: 8×10, 8.5×11 and 11×17 inches. You’ll find these illustrations from Leo Fontan under the “Vintage Illustrations” tab in The VIP Patch.

And last but not least, I want to share some of A.-P Martial’s drawings with you: hand-colored etchings of Paris boulevards. I included 6 beautiful etchings in 4 different sizes (8×10, 8.5×11, 11×17 and 16×20 inches) into our last set of bathroom wall art printables, and I hope you enjoy them all. You can find these beautiful boulevard illustrations under the “Vintage Illustrations” tab in The VIP Patch.

Before I leave, I want to quickly remind you that you can scale the 16×20 inch printables down to 12×15 / 8×10 / 4×5 inches with no problems. If you need help with scaling down these printables so you can print them using your home printer, then make sure you check out our “How To Easily Resize Pictures” post.

Now it’s time to click on the button below to download the printables you’d like!

Handan, xo

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