Let's face it; artwork is expensive. Most rooms look empty and boring if there isn't anything on the walls. At the same time, you could end up spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars purchasing paintings, decorative mirrors, and other pieces to decorate your home. Did you know that you can create many of these masterpieces yourself for just a fraction of the cost? Even if you don't consider yourself to be especially artistic, there are some easy ways to dress up your walls that cost little more than the price of the frame.

Inexpensive Frames

Before we get into the DIY art projects themselves, let's take a moment to talk about the frames. If you head to any art supply store, you'll find that even the most plain frames can be very expensive. If you want something more beautiful, you could end up spending upwards of a hundred dollars, and that's before you even buy anything to put in the frame.

A great way to get frames for cheap, though, is to head to yard sales and estate sales. It doesn't matter if you like the artwork or not--just look for interesting frames. You can find very large frames for just a few dollars at second-hand stores as well. People generally price a piece for the artwork, forgetting how much they paid for the frame. With a fresh coat of paint, you can take old frames that you find and turn them into brand new pieces to decorate your home.

Abstract Paintings

It's amazing how much money people will spend on abstract paintings. While some are actually extremely deep and have a lot of personal meaning to the artist and to other people, others are just splashes of paint on a canvas. Few people know the difference. A great way to get painting in your home without spending an arm and a leg is to use the drop cloth you laid down when you painted the room. It will already contain the wall color and the trim color from the random dibbles of paint on it, and you can use a paint brush to splatter another coordinating color or two onto the make-shift canvas. Cut out a large piece with interesting patterns, frame it, and hang it in your home. You'll be surprised at how professional it will look when it's on your wall in a frame.

Framing Paper

Another great place to find artwork is in the craft store's scrapbooking section. Most have aisles filled with sheets of 12 inch by 12 inch papers, meant to be used to create photo albums. These papers are beautiful on their own, however. If you need smaller pieces, frame just a single paper, or you can group four (or more) pieces that coordinate together in a frame to create a larger work of art. Companies create papers that coordinate well already, in order to make creating scrapbook pages easier for crafters, so it is just a matter of purchasing the ones you like best. Papers typically cost less than $1 each, and you can even purchase entire books of coordinating papers to do your whole home if you want.

Get Artistic with your Camera

Taking some artistic shots with your camera isn't as hard as you think, and larger prints don't cost as much as artwork. Come up with a "theme" for your photography, and it will look like art in a frame. For example, take pictures of tons of neat doors around town, focus in on snapshots of church steeples, or group together close-up pictures of parts of your car. For an extra artistic touch, get the pictures printed in black and white.

There's no shame in using others' work either. Check out the creative commons pictures on Flickr and other photo sharing websites. As long as you don't intend to use these pictures in a commercial way (ie, you aren't going to sell them) you can use them in your home. If you have a good enough printer, that means awesome photography artwork could only cost a few dollars.

Kids' Artwork

If you have kids, one of the best ways to add artwork to your home is to frame pictures they make for you. To create a cohesive look, give them just a few paint color options that match your room and have them create whatever they want on large canvases, which you can get in packs for as little as $5 to $10 each. You'll be surprised with what they create and these works of art are not just abstract gems to make your home decor more interesting, but they're also records of your children at that point in time. To create a real keepsake, have them dip their hand in paint and make a hand print on the back of the canvas, and attach a picture of them from that point in their lives. Long after you change your room's decor, these will be keepsakes that you treasure.