My Best Kept Budget Decorating Secret

People ask me all the time about how to decorate on a budget. I love helping people create cozy and beautiful spaces without spending a lot of money. If you have a lot of wall space, it can seem overwhelming and impossible to fill without looking cluttered or costing a fortune. I think that Ben and I have found the “best kept secret” of affordable and beautiful wall art. After discovering this decorating loophole, we have filled our home with this unexpected item and you wouldn’t even know it until I let you in on our secret. Here are a few photos of rooms in our home (and my client’s homes) that all contain our favorite kind of art. See if you can figure it out!

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My friend, Stephanie’s kitchen.

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Our guest room.

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Our front porch.

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Our master bedroom.

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Our dining room.

Did you figure it out? Our favorite thing to use as wall art is wrapping paper! These pieces of wrapping paper don’t look like what you would find under your Christmas tree. And if you’re ever in a shop that sells this brand, you might think it’s silly to pay $4-5 for a single sheet of wrapping paper. But if you look at it with resourceful eyes, $5 for a large scale piece of wall art isn’t bad! We purchased a few large frames from Ikea (for $15 a piece). You can also attach small slats of wood or round dowels to the top and bottom, and hang them like vintage school charts. If you don’t want to DIY the charts, you can purchase a kit from Cavallini on Amazon.

horizontal chartvertical chart kit

Horizontal Chart Kit + Vertical Chart Kit

These sheets of wrapping paper (Excluding the very last photo of the dining room) are all from Cavallini & Co. You can find their products in various small paper boutiques (like Paper Source). If you are lucky and live near a store that carries their products, you won’t have to pay for shipping. But, some of their wrapping paper sheets are available on Amazon Prime for $8-10 (which is about what you would pay for the product plus shipping anyways). Rifle Paper Co. also sells wrapping paper sheets.

Here are a few of my favorites that can be found on Amazon.

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Vintage Penmanship Chart

cacti

Cacti and Succulents

botany

Vintage Botany Chart

Minerals

Minerals

celestial

Celestial Chart

world

World Map (pictured above in my friend Stephanie’s kitchen!)

hemispheres

Hemispheres (Pictured above in our guest room. This one is my favorite! I love the colors)

birds

Birds

This last one is my favorite, and was my first wrapping paper purchase! I bought it while Ben and I were dating in college and hung it in my dorm room. Now it hangs in our bedroom! I love the vintage birds and their french labels.

The links I included above are affiliate links, which means that I receive a small commission if you purchase any of the items through my link. No one is paying me to advertise these products- I only promote products that I recommend or use myself! I don’t like telling people to spend money, and try to avoid telling people to go buy things in order to decorate their homes. My approach to decorating is to first “shop your house” and freshen up a space using things that are already in your home. Instead of going shopping every time you’re wanting something different and fresh, look at your own home with resourceful eyes and repurpose things you already have! After that, if you’re still looking to spruce things up, look for creative ways to make affordable and sustainable purchases. These wrapping paper sheets are very affordable, and create a large scale visual impact! If you don’t want to pay for multiple frames, you can just purchase one and rotate the wrapping paper that you display inside.


My secret is out! I love finding affordable ways to decorate, and this is one of my favorite tricks. Do you have any decorating tricks for saving money without sacrificing style? I’d love to hear your ideas!

Thanks for reading!

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4 thoughts on “My Best Kept Budget Decorating Secret

  1. masao626

    Genius! When I first saw the framed birds in the tour of your dining room, I believe, I was smitten. Seeing pop up elsewhere (porch?), made me smile and reminded me that if I found an affordable jewel like that 2nd hand, my head would pop off before reaching the register!
    Thank you for sharing your secret so now I can curate my very own gallery!

  2. Lisa Jo

    Wonderful idea for sure, I’m always on the hunt for this type of art and have used many an old book page too. I really love when I find large sized graphic old books and am able to use their pages for my walls. I’ve also used maps from my local welcome center as art and as decoupage pictures for furniture repurposing and to cover an old floor in a mobile home I used to live in. I’ve even used maps and wrapping paper and tissue paper to cover an old fridge I once had.
    Fun times putting together a house of thrift…

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