Julie's Living Room: Repurposing a Framed Canvas

Julie has been on the hunt for some large, statement art for her living room to hang above her couch.  While we've found some pieces that we love for this space, they've all been really expensive due to their size.  Not wanting to spend a ton of money, we've been putting this room off since Julie moved in over a year ago.

While browsing our local thrift store the other day, we found two framed canvases-- we loved the frames (a pretty gold), the size (43" x 35"), and the price...only $30 for the pair! Even though the actual art in the frames made us cringe, we knew we could repurpose them.

We decided to use one above her new couch in the living room and the other for her master bedroom.  For the piece in the living room, Julie convinced Sarah to paint something for her.  For anyone interested in painting over an old canvas, Gesso will be your saving grace. Gesso is basically like primer in the art world...it gets your canvas ready for any acrylic paint, and makes it so that your new paint will hold to canvas, regardless of what was on it before.

Once the Gesso dried, we taped off the sides of the canvas with painter's tape in order to protect the frame from any drips.  A short time later, our canvas looked like this:

A huge piece of framed art for only $15! We absolutely love how it looks in the room-- we feel like it ties the look of the living room all together, and love that the color of the grass in the painting pulls in some of the chartreuse color from the upholstery on an accent chair in the room.

For the second canvas, we're thinking of taking inspiration from this project shared by Jenny.  Because the piece will go in Julie's master bedroom, we think we might blow up a photo from her wedding and mount it inside the frame.  Considering the size of the frame, we don't want the photo to have Julie and Clay's faces front and center, so we'd like to use a picture like the one below, which features the church they were married in (shameless plug for our amazing wedding photographer, Krystal Muellenberg).  Once the piece is enlarged and printed on blueprint paper, it will be black and white:

We haven't committed to this project just yet, because we're thinking that a big piece of art would also look great in Julie's teeny-tiny second bedroom.  What do you think-- paint over canvas #2 and put it in the second bedroom or enlarge a photo for the master bedroom?