Movie Wall Art Done Cheap

Living in an apartment means many times management will not let you paint walls. I had a HUGE blank slab of white wall above my couch that was screaming for something. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to put up there, but I knew I wanted something I painted on canvas. I thought about doing one big giant canvas, but the costs were far out of my budget.

I got an idea after sitting around with friends having dinner and discussing movies and the thought occurred to me to express my favorite movies on canvas! I purchased 16 x 20" canvas 2 packs from Michaels (using a 40% coupon each time of course) along with white and brown acrylic paint. (You can get your 40% off Michael’s coupon from the Sunday newspaper ads or by signing up for a weekly coupon emailed to you at micheals.com. Trust me it helps when buying a lot of craft supplies like I do.)


So I started by painted each canvas with the silhouette of each movie character in white and painted the background brown. This would give the person viewing the canvas a clue on what movie it was and yet keep all the different movies unison. I finished with two coats of a matte acrylic spray to seal the art.

(Kill Bill Vol. 1)

To get the uniform look on the wall, I took long poster paper and laid out each canvas on the floor. I then placed my canvas in the arrangement I liked measured the distance between each to ensure the correct placement to get that uniform look. Once I got each of the canvas how I liked them, I traced each with a black marker. I then measured where each nail would need to go behind the canvas and marked on the poster paper.

I then hug my poster paper on the wall and tapped nails into the wall at each of the nail markings. (I am sure my neighbor loved me pounding 12 nails into the wall, but with the nail marks already measured, it went super fast. )Once all the nails were firmly in place, I tore the paper away and hung each of the canvases on the wall. Simple as that!

Total cost of the project: Around $40 bucks.