Make your own picture frames!!

 Hi all!  I'm continuing my crazy home improvement trend and today I'm showing you how I made my own picture frames!!  (We redid our lamp too...I found a couple of wire light covers off of Amazon, and then BOOM! modern light figure.)  

But let's talk about the frames right now.  We have some lovely art from my husband's grandfather and we've wanted to find frames for them.  The problem is that the art is odd shaped, and difficult to find frames for.  And custom framing is expensive, sooooo we decided to try a DIY option.  I really like how they turned out!  (Did anyone recognize our buffet?  That's a really old DIY on the blog!)

  

The frames are lovely though.  Not perfect by any means, but I think they look nice.   And today I'm going to show you how you can make your own!  Keep reading for all the details. 

I made four frames, with some wood left over, for about $40.  We could have done it even cheaper if we'd used cheaper wood.  We wanted to stain them though, so we sprung for some more expensive wood.

 

Here's what you need:

• Wood (The interior dimensions of my frames were 12.5 x 18. I used a 2.5 inch wide x .5 inch x 8 feet long piece of Douglas Fir (I think...) wood for each frame (there was a bit left over for each).)
• wood glue
• wood putty
• Miter saw
• sand paper
• Wood stain.  I used Poly Shades Antique Walnut GLOSS
• 4 "L shaped" brackets per frame
• Hardware for hanging the frame, masking tape (for attaching the artwork to the back of the frame.

The actual cutting process was super quick.  I borrowed a Miter Saw from my dad, and I LOVE it.  So easy to use.  I'm pretty sure it's going to be the top item on my wish list for my next birthday, Christmas, etc!

After cutting the pieces I was pretty much on a high.  I was thinking wow!  This is so easy I'm never going to buy another frame again!  And then reality hit.  The cutting is the easy part!  The rest took so much longer.  It still wasn't hard...they came together in a few hours, but I think I'll save frame making for frames which, like these, are either oddly shaped or statement pieces.

I found the easiest way to make the frames was to add some wood glue to the edges and then just let them sit on the concrete of my garage to let them dry.  I was worried that the frames would be really flimsy, but after letting them dry I was impressed by how secure they were.

 I did add some L shaped bracket to the back once everything was dry though, just to be on the safe side. 

The next step was to add wood putty to the junctions (make sure that you get stain-able wood putty if you are going to stain your frames.)  I let the putty dry and then sanded them up.

Some of my junctions looked better than others, but overall I was pretty pleased once I sanded them all down.

I stained the frames and let them sit in my garage for a bit to let them finish off-gassing. Then I just taped the canvas artwork in.   All in all, I'd say it was a weekend of picture frame making success!

If you'd like to see more of my home projects, you can see them HERE.  I recently revamped my blog, so now you can see all my favorite projects in a gallery of pictures, which I think is so much easier to navigate!

Finally, I just want to give a big shout out of THANKS to those of you who started "officially" following me via email, facebook, instagram or pinterest.  It really does mean so much to me!  Thank you for following me!

Have a great week everyone!  

XOXO, 

Jill

 DISCLOSURE: Jill Pauli is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.