DIY Decorating a Niche In the Wall For Less Than $20

I've always wondered what to do with the niche in the wall or shadow box cutout thingie that some houses have. I've also wondered what to call them exactly. If it's deep, you can put a silk flower arrangement in a nice vase, but what about shallow niches that won't hold flower arrangements?

We have a niche (for lack of a better term) in an odd place, tucked in a hallway next to our master bedroom. (Instead of a niche by the front door or front entry, where I usually see one.)
It's shallow and the top is arched in a half-circle.

We've lived in our house for 2 years, and it wasn't until we were getting the house ready to put on the market that I was forced to deal with it. Before then, the niche contained a bunch of our wedding photos and other photos of John and me, along with some candles, and my brothers-in-law called it The Shrine. I guess that's code for "decorate this thing already."

A year ago at Michaels, I'd seen a promising wrought-iron thingamabob that looked like a garden gate and was arched on top. Pretty sure it would fit in the niche, though I'd need to measure it. It's still at Michaels, but I'd held off on buying it because I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted. It would be attached to the wall with many large holes, and if we ever moved, we wouldn't take it with us, so why spend the money on it? Indecision ruled, and procrastination settled in.

Then of course we had to put the house on the market, and on his initial walk-through, our realtor said that something else had to be done with the niche. (Not to mention, we were told to remove all personal photos in the house, and the niche was full of, um, personal photos.) Having already spent some money on other things to spruce up the house for buyers, I didn't want to spend another $40-50 on something that we definitely wouldn't be taking with us when we moved.

Semi-solution: Hit the stores and see what other alternatives there were. I had a vague idea of hanging "some kind of nice picture in a frame" in the niche instead. Went to Wal-Mart first because we might as well start on the cheap end. Sure enough, Wal-Mart didn't disappoint: I found a frame with that was really 4 connected frames that overlapped each other, creating a kind of 3-D effect - better than a flat frame and perfect for a niche.

But that would hang on the wall; what about something to rest on the "floor" of the niche? It would look bare with just a hanging frame which wasn't very large. Headed to Ross, which always bothers me because of the general sense of disorganization that permeates the air. But good deals can always be found there, even if I didn't have a firm idea of what else to look for. John found a wrought-iron piece with votives that was simple but would work well (without contributing to the Shrine atmostphere I was trying to eliminate).

Next, the pictures for the frames. We couldn't use personal photos, so we turned to our travel photos. I selected a bunch of Europe photos that we had - choosing a mix of vertical and horizontal since the frame I'd bought had 2 of each orientation. I converted them to sepia tone using Photoshop Elements and printed them (at Wal-Mart, of course). Then we went through the photos and chose 2 horiziontal and 2 vertical. In the end, the 4 pictures were all taken in Rome, which suited our thematic senses: the Coliseum, the Borghese Gallery, the Saturn Temple at the Forum, and St. Peter's Cathedral.

Picture frame: $12
Developed pictures: less than $1
Wrought-iron votive holder: $6
Votives: already had, so $0
Total cost: $19

Here's the frame with the pictures:

And here's the finished niche:

The frame could stand to be bigger, but not bad for something thrown together in 1 day on a budget.