{affordable Slim Aarons artwork}

I have been obsessed with the fabulous images captured by Slim Aarons for what feels like forever. He captures another time and place in a way that makes like you are sitting right inside the image.  Adding a Slim Aarons print to our art collection has been on my wishlist forever, but for the size of print I would want the price is pretty steep.  Also on my wishlist for a while now are the Slim Aarons coffee table books which I had never actually seen in person.  Recently I found out the books are pretty massive (as in 11" by 14"!!) with a lot of full page photos in them that are void of text or captions.  I thought maybe if I could find a used version of the Poolside book for a good price, I would be willing to cut it up and use my favorite pages for a little Slim Aarons gallery shelf in my office.

I purchased a used version of the book for only $25 that had some dust jacket damage, but was otherwise in perfect condition!  After spending almost an entire evening enjoying the gorgeous book, I took note of some of my favorite shots and then picked up some corresponding frames.  All the frames (except for the one on the far right and very middle which are vintage) are from Target right here.  I would have preferred to have them all in white, but Target doesn't make the larger frame in white so I figured I could buy the black and paint it later on if it bothered me (for now I sort of like the contrast).  You can find all white frames in practically every size at Ikea right here- I was simply not willing to spend half a day going all the way to Ikea for 4 frames.

Besides the time I took selecting my favorite images, the most time consuming part of this little project is to use an exacto knife to "cut out" the photos from the book.  In order to use the full page photos in an 11" by 14" frame you will need to cut the pages as close as humanly possible to the binding.  Using an exacto knife, a ruler and a cutting mat makes this entire process relatively easy. Simply push back the book binding as much as you can, place the cutting mat under the page and then place the ruler close the binding.  Slide the exacto knife in between the ruler and the binding while using the ruler as a guide for the knife you can easily cut out the pages.

I am pretty obsessed with how this turned out and love that I have such beautiful images to get lost in while sitting at my desk!

 {slim aarons poolside book available used here}

 {exacto knife and cutting mat will make this project significantly easier}

 {it was so difficult to narrow it down to only five choices!}

 {frames from Target: smaller one here and larger one here}

 {displayed in the office on shelves from Ikea}

{target lamp from right here}