Who doesn’t love a simple knock-off? Especially from Anthropologie. Well, what makes a knock-off even better is when the price is ridiculous! Here, this fun print by this artist comes with a price tag of $698. $698!!! Add to that a $75 shipping fee on top of the regular shipping price. And besides, they won’t even ship to Hawai’i anyway. Being the un-cultured girl that I am, I have no idea who the artist is. 
I didn’t copy the exact dimensions and colors. Although it would be easy. I just went with the most reasonably priced frame from Wal-Mart. If I had the time, I would have gone to Ross (It’s like TJ Maxx on the mainland) and found a much prettier frame. Who wants to drag four kids frame shopping? Although the Anthro frame isn’t anything special.
I’ve been wanting to do fun wall art that my kids did, but that doesn’t look kid-ish. This was perfect. So, our frame is only 16″x20.” It’s not even a square.
Here we go:
I got a 10 pack of poster boards at Wal-Mart for just over four bucks! I traced my dimensions according to the frame I bought. Anthro uses a 29″ square frame. I went with a 16″ x 20″ for convenience.
I cut my board using all my quilting supplies. I have a not-so-great rotary cutter that I no longer use on fabric because it’s not that good. But, it’s great for getting straight cuts on everything else.
Now, I think I made this more complicated than it needed to be, but I divided it up in to three equal parts-length and width.
Then, I drew diagonal lines to locate exact centers for each of the nine equal sections. There are many ways to find your center of each of the sections, but this is how I did it.
My daughter’s first grade teacher does a really neat thing with her students. Whenever they paint, they always start with primary colors, white and black. Then, they mix their own colors. I thought that was so cool! The colors the kids come up with are endless. And it makes for a much smaller paint supply with a lot less wasted paint!
As for the colors, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted. I had the kids stick with blues, greens and orange/red.
It’s so much more beautiful when you get to mix your own colors. And lots more fun!
I guess I missed a picture. I did all the center dots myself. So, I had nine dots. I tried to teach the kids not to “drag” their hand across the board and to try to keep their fingers as upright as possible when placing the dots. 
Look how pretty that paint is. It looks like candy!
I did guide them as to what colors to use for each new set of dots. I just didn’t want two similar colors right next to each other. I also didn’t want to end up with too much of the same color. If my son had his way, this whole thing might just be blue and yellow.
After they finished all the dots, I let it sit overnight. Next, I had to erase all those pencil lines. Make sure you have a good eraser that removes the mark, but doesn’t take up the paper. My favorite eraser is the Super Hi-Polymer Eraser. I have about a hundred of them. They usually go on sale for 3/ $1.00. Of course, I couldn’t find any. So I settled for this Christmas one which actually did pretty good.
As you can see, it isn’t perfect. I gave the four year old a little too much freedom on some of the areas. We also did a bit more dots than the “real thing.” If you do it yourself, you can get it pretty spot-on to what you want. 
This is the cheap $12 frame I got from Wal-Mart. If you need something to scale smaller, they also have 11″ x 14″ frames for five bucks!
I wanted a black frame since it’s going on a white wall. Plus, it’s all the spray paint I had on hand. 
As an added bonus, while my paint was drying, FIVE stinkin’ mosquitoes ended their lives. Hahahaha! My poor baby has been getting eaten up this summer. So to have had five knocked off for this knock-off (pretty tricky), made me very happy.
I love that this new wall art was made up of my kids’ little fingertips. It doesn’t just look fun, it’s sentimental too! And it’s hanging in their library area.
