How To Print FREE Vintage Botanical Art Prints to Decorate Your Home!

Use FREE Botanical and Nature Prints for Home Decor

Want to add a little Summer decor to your tables or walls?  Did you know you can print FREE botanical prints form the New York Public Library’s Digital Collection? You can!

Search through vintage illustrations of plants, flowers, birds, trees and much, much more.  Many of these are from the 1800’s and it’s SO COOL to look through them all! For some simple summery art prints, check out the collection of Fern Botanical Prints or Birds (this one is very pretty) or Butterflies of North America to start.  (Or look into the Blue Corals  or Nautilus Shells for seaside display.)

All of these are copyright free and open for public use. There are vintage scientific illustrations and photographs, as well as watercolors and oil paintings.  What a treasure trove!

Here are a couple direct links to help you spot some good ones:

• Lemon Tree
• Lachenalia Tricolor
• Iris Germanica
• This gorgeousPeacock Art Print has already been turned into a full-size PDF by TheGraphicsFairy
• This Blue algae print looks like modern art! (See more from the same British Cyanotype collection)

How to Print Free Botanical Drawings and Art Prints:

1. Find the print you like and right click on it – choose “open in a new tab”
2. When the image opens by itself, right click and choose “save image as”
3. Open up the image in your photo editor, or Picmonkey, Canva, etc, and crop it to any size you want
4. Print!

Pro Tip: If your image has a colored or yellowed background that you don’t care for – use PicMonkey’s “Remove Background” tool (it looks like a tiny pair of scissors near the top of the left-hand Editing Menu) to isolate the main image and remove the surrounding text and background coloring.

I’d love to see what fun prints you come up with – please comment with any pretty or cool art you discover!