Vintage Botanical Prints

You had some questions about the botanical prints I used in my living room gallery wall I did a couple of months ago, so I thought I would share where I got them from and where I had them printed.

Through my search of vintage botanical prints I stumbled across an amazing resource called Botanicus. Botanicus is a free, web-based encyclopedia of historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. Their primary focus is on the beautifully illustrated volumes from their rare book collection.

There are hundreds of titles available, though I chose this volume that has 84 beautiful plates. I narrowed my choices down to these four plates.

Plate 34 Pear | Plate 26 Mezereon

Plate 16 Linum | Plate 2 Citrus

Using the pages tab on the left hand side of the screen, scroll down until you see 'plates.' Click on anyone to view the individual plate. If you see one you like, and I know you will, you can download it one of two ways.

The 1st way is to download the entire collection by clicking the download button at the top of the screen. It is a 36 mb PDF so it might take a moment to download. The 2nd way is to download the plate you want individually. On the right hand side of the screen you will see a down arrow. Click it and a window will pop up, pick the size you want, then right click on the image and pick 'save image as.'

I printed my vintage prints at FedEx Kinko's on regular paper. They look high quality, even on regular paper. Since I used the Ribba frame from Ikea that called for an unusual print size, I had them printed on 12 x 18 paper with an image size of 11.6 x 15.6. I spent $3 per print.

Now, thanks to Botanicus, we all have access to an amazing collection of plates that you can use to create your own artwork! Gallery walls, cards, gift tags, what have you. Whatever you create using this fabulous botanical resource, please send me a picture. I would love to see what you come up with! See ya soon!