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I want to be the kind of person who pulls out a real canvas in October and makes a moody amber landscape while the kettle goes. I am not that person. I tried it once, two years back, and the den still has a faint olive streak on the baseboard from where I knocked the jar over.
So here is my actual autumn painting plan. I print. I find art I love online, run it through my sad little inkjet, slide it into a frame, and hang it. My sister came over last week, stood in the entryway, and asked which gallery I bought the moose print from. I bought it for the price of a coffee and printed it on Tuesday. I did not correct her right away.
The pieces below are the ones I actually printed and hung this season, mostly from an indie design shop I keep going back to. A few of these links are affiliate links, so if you grab one I might get a tiny cut. Costs you nothing. Here we go.
The Kids’ Clipart Set That Saved My Blank Den Wall
This one is a whole set of little autumn characters, and I will be honest, I bought it thinking it was for a craft afternoon with my grandmother and the grandkids. Then I printed two of the figures large, framed them, and they ended up on the den wall instead. Funny how that goes.
The trick with a set like this is restraint. I picked the two in amber and olive tones, skipped the rest, and let them breathe in matching frames. Printed on 110 lb matte so the color did not bleed into a muddy mess.
One nitpick. A couple of the figures sit on a transparent background, so if you print on bright white paper they float a little oddly. I dropped a soft cream rectangle behind mine first, and that fixed it.
A Quiet Fence Scene For People Who Cannot Hold A Brush
I love a watercolor look and I will never be able to make one by hand, so this fence piece is exactly my kind of cheating. Soft edges, that bleeding-pigment feel, and not a single drop of real paint near my floor.
I printed it at a normal 8×10, framed it in a thin black frame, and hung it in the entryway where the afternoon light hits. The watercolor washes read warmer in person than on screen, more amber than I expected, which I did not mind one bit.
The nitpick here is sizing. The art has a fair bit of white space around the fence, so if you crop tight in the frame you lose the airy quiet that makes it work. I left the margins alone and it looked far better.
One Fuzzy Sheep, Framed, And My Sister Would Not Stop Talking About It
A single fuzzy sheep should not be as charming as this is, but my sister walked past it in the den and made a noise I can only describe as a coo. So. It works.
I kept this one small, a 5×7 on heavy cardstock, propped on a shelf rather than hung. The wool texture has these tiny olive-flecked details that you only catch up close, which is why a shelf at eye level beats a high wall for this one.
My one gripe is that the sheep sits a touch off-center in the file. I noticed it after framing and it nagged at me, so I nudged the mat over by a few millimeters to balance it. Probably nobody else would have seen it, but I would have.
A Tiny Harvest Mouse That Earns Its Spot On A Crowded Shelf
I have a narrow shelf in the entryway that collects keys and one sad dead plant, and I wanted something small and warm to anchor it. This harvest mouse, clutching its little bit of wheat, did the job.
Printed it tiny, a 4×6, in a wooden frame the same amber as the wheat in the art. It disappears into the shelf in the best way, like it has always been there. My grandmother spotted it and said it reminded her of a storybook she had as a girl.
Nitpick. The wheat detail is fine and thin, so a low-ink print turns it to a vague smudge. I caught mine mid-print looking faded, swapped the cartridge, and ran it again. Worth the second sheet.
The Moose Bundle That Got Mistaken For Gallery Art
This is the moose. The one my sister thought came from a gallery. It is a bundle, so you get a few poses and angles, which is more than I needed but I am not complaining.
I went big with the main moose, a full 11×14, olive background and a deep amber frame, and hung it as the anchor piece in the entryway. A bundle like this is great because you can print one large hero and a couple of small companions and they already match.
The nitpick is file size versus print size. One of the smaller poses in the bundle gets soft if you push it past 8×10, so I kept those little. Save the big print for the main one and you are golden.
An Autumn Girl Bundle For The Wall That Needed A Person In It
My den wall was all animals and leaves and it started to feel like a petting zoo, so I wanted a figure to break it up. This autumn girl bundle did exactly that, a gentle character in seasonal colors who gives the wall a focal point.
I printed her at 8×10 and slotted her between the fence print and the moose. The amber and olive in her clothing tied the whole grouping together without me planning it, which felt like a small win I did not earn.
One nitpick. There are several versions in the bundle and a couple lean a bit more cartoonish than the rest, so pick the one whose style matches your other prints or the wall gets visually noisy. I chose the softest one and left the rest for the kids.
A Teddy Bear Print That Belongs Exactly Where The Kids Gather
I made this one for the low shelf in the den where the little ones sit, because a whimsical autumn teddy bear is not really entryway material and I know it. It is sweet and a bit silly and that is the whole point.
Printed on cardstock, framed in a chunky frame they cannot easily knock over, and set right at their height. My grandmother and I did the framing together one slow afternoon, which was honestly half the fun.
Nitpick. The bear has a lot of warm brown that can go flat and dull on cheap paper. I printed mine on matte photo stock and the amber and olive accents finally popped instead of muddying together.
A Watercolor Cat For The Person Who Already Has Too Many Cats
I do not have a cat. I have, apparently, a watercolor one now, hanging in the den, because it was too good to pass up. Soft washes, a curled-up autumn pose, the kind of thing I could never paint and would not even try.
I framed it at 8×10 to sit beside the fence print, since both share that loose watercolor feel and they read as a little pair. The olive in the background pulls it together with everything else on the wall.
Here is where I have to confess my failure. The frame glass had a thumbprint smudge I missed until it was hung, and of course it sat right across the cat’s face. I took the whole thing back down, wiped the glass, and rehung it. Check your glass before the nail goes in, is the lesson.
A Pattern Set That Became The Backing Paper For Everything Else
This is not a single art piece, it is a set of seamless autumn patterns, and I did not frame it on its own. Instead it became the secret weapon behind all my other prints. I used the amber and olive patterns as backing paper inside frames and as a liner for the shelf.
The seamless part matters because you can print a whole sheet and the pattern flows with no awkward seam. I ran a few pages, tucked them behind lighter prints to add warmth, and lined the entryway shelf so the keys stop scratching the wood.
Nitpick. Some of the patterns are busy, so if you back a detailed print with a loud pattern it fights. I stuck to the calmer ones for backing and saved the busy ones for the shelf liner where nothing competes with them.
More Autumn Girls For When One Figure Is Not Enough
After the first autumn girl worked so well in the den, I wanted a small grouping somewhere else, and this set of whimsical fall girls gave me the pieces to do it. A few characters, all in the same gentle seasonal style, ready to print as a little trio.
I printed three at 5×7, framed them identically, and ran them in a row down the entryway wall. Matching sizes and frames do the heavy lifting here, so even a quick print job looks deliberate. My sister, back again, declared the entryway my best wall yet.
The nitpick is consistency. Across the set the girls vary slightly in proportion, so if you line them up some look a touch larger than others. I picked three that felt evenly matched and skipped the odd one out. Took me two tries to get the trio right.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to stop posters falling down?
My honest answer is to stop trusting tape. I lost a moose print twice to a curled corner before I gave up and put everything in real frames, and a framed print on a proper hook simply does not slide off the way a taped poster does.
If you want it flat on the wall without a frame, mounting strips rated for the weight beat regular tape every time. Clean the wall first so the strips actually grip, and press for a slow count rather than a quick poke.
How to keep a poster from falling off the wall?
Weight and surface are the two things people forget. A heavy cardstock print needs a stronger hold than a thin paper one, so match the hook or strip to what you are actually hanging. I once used a flimsy strip on an 11×14 and it peeled off the entryway wall by morning.
Wall texture matters too. Strips struggle on rough or freshly painted walls, so on those I use a small nail and a frame instead. Slower to hang, but it stays put through the whole season.
Can I print these at home?
Yes, and that is the whole reason I love them. Every piece here I ran on my own tired inkjet, mostly on 110 lb matte cardstock, and they came out lovely. If your printer is small you can also send the file to a local print shop or the library printer for the bigger sizes.
My one tip is to do a quick test on plain paper first to check the color before you commit the good cardstock. I have wasted a sheet or two skipping that step, usually when the amber comes out looking orange.
What file formats do these designs come in?
Most of these come as high-resolution image files ready to print, which is exactly what you want for hanging on a wall. You download, open, and send to the printer at the size you need.
If you care about printing large, check the resolution before you scale a piece up, since a small file pushed to 11×14 can go soft. I keep my big prints to the pieces that hold up and let the smaller files stay small.
Before You Print
So that is my autumn painting plan, which involves exactly zero painting. A stack of files, a tired printer, a pile of frames from the closet, and one afternoon of hanging things slightly crooked and fixing them. My grandmother thinks I have a real eye now. I have a printer and good taste in other people’s art.
If you only grab one, make it the moose for the entryway. It is the piece that gets the gasp, and the one my sister still will not believe I printed at home. Just wipe the glass before you hang it. Ask me how I learned that.
