How I Used Engineer Prints for Decorating
Today is Bob and my 12th wedding anniversary! We don’t normally buy each other presents for our anniversary, but this year I had something in mind I thought he’d like. I couldn’t wait to give him his present, so I gave it to him a few nights ago after dinner.
It’s a large, framed print of the sheet music for the song we danced to at our wedding, Into the Mystic.
And it’s a good present because I often forget the name of the song. The seizure medicine I was taking around the time we were married affected my memory terribly.
In fact, I don’t actually remember much about the wedding itself. A few years ago, Bob, Nila and I went to visit the church where we were married and I didn’t even recognize it when we pulled up!
Now, this large print of the music is hanging up in our living room, making sure I never forget. I’d like to get a wood ledge to hang directly under it, then add some nice succulents and a few knick knacks on it to add some color to that particular wall.
It’s all part of the Great Redecorating of 2018.
Ok, that’s not really a thing. But when I painted the living room walls a few weeks ago, we decided not to hang back up anything that was there before because we didn’t really like any of it. So now our living room looks completely bare, as if we just moved in. At least I have a good idea of what I’d like and I can work on it slowly.
I thought I’d share with you how I made this gift, in case you might like to do something similar in your home.
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How to Use Engineering Prints For Decorating
The first thing I did was find the sheet music. I started by searching Sheet Music Plus for “Into The Mystic.”
I’ve used Sheet Music Plus before, when Nila wanted violin music for “A Million Dreams” from The Greatest Showman. It’s a really practical site to keep bookmarked if you have any need for sheet music.
After I purchased the sheet music for $3.99, I opened the PDF they sent me and exported each page as a .png. That’s just a setting in both the Windows and Mac PDF viewer under File>. You don’t need fancy software to do it.
I knew I wasn’t going to need all three pages printed, so I trashed the second and third pages so they wouldn’t clutter up my desktop.
Then, I sent the .png to Office Depot to be printed as an engineering print. On their website, they call them Blueprints, and sometimes Engineering Prints. Depending on the company, you may hear it called either.
What is an engineer print?
An engineering print isn’t technically meant for printing photos or artwork. Mostly, it’s used by engineers and architects to print their delicate blueprints and plans. But there’s nothing that says you can’t use it to print large scale pieces yourself.
It’s particularly well suited to black and white printing, and black and white photos. Of course, the better the original image, the better your end product.
Where to buy engineer prints?
I mentioned that I used Office Depot to print this sheet music. We have used engineering prints before, and always had them printed at Staples. For some reason though, I couldn’t get the online ordering software at Staples to properly position the image, so I went looking for somewhere else to have it printed.
I landed at Office Depot, and their software worked just as expected.
I printed the sheet music at 24×36 inches, intending to hang it vertically. As you can see, the total price was less than $4.00.
How to hang engineer prints?
The print comes on a fairly thin paper. We like to frame ours in a proper frame, either glass or plexiglass over it. For this, I used the Mossebo frame from Ikea in white ($19.99). This frame comes with matting, but you don’t have to use if it you don’t want to. I like it, so I kept it in. That did mean I had to fold up a portion of the bottom of the print. If you weren’t using the mat, you wouldn’t have to fold at all.
If you like a more rustic look, you could grab this real barnwood frame from Amazon:
And if you like a more traditional look, this walnut wood one would look nice, too.
The total cost for this gift was less than $30. Engineering prints are a great way to add large scale prints to your home on a budget. I’d love to see what you create using an engineering print. I know I love seeing this piece of music every day!
