DIY Rustic Picture Frames

Ever since moving in a year and a half ago Rebecca and I have been slowly working on furniture and decorations for our new home. It has been a slow process because we either (1) don't really know what we want or what would look good in certain spaces (how come we don't have any interior decorators in either of our families who could just tell us what to do), (2) we know what we want, but can't seem to find the right things at the stores, or (3) we find the right thing, but it costs about 10 times the amount that we would like to spend on it.

Well recently we found some neat Family Proclamation and The Living Christ posters online that we wanted to put up somewhere. We looked around at the stores and picture frames for the size we wanted were all way too much. So I decided I would try to make some frames on my own. Here is how I did it. I am not a carpenter at all, so there are probably better ways to do this, but these steps were pretty easy for me and Rebecca and I both think that they turned out really nice.


Step 1) Pick out some wood. We decided to go for a rustic look for these frames. We had considered a few different options, but the rustic frames were the ones that we always liked best at the framing stores. We do have some old wood lying around our house that is rustic looking, but it is all super heavy and we didn't want frames that would hurt someone or damage our house if they fall off the wall.  Lowes has a lot of rustic frame options. For the 4 inch wide by 8 feet long pieces Lowes charges $8.

A few important things to remember here. Make sure you get your measurements right. Because you are going to cut each of the boards at an angle you are going to need to plan for much longer pieces than the artwork that you are trying to frame. Also, try to get the straightest pieces you can. These rustic boards are more warped than the higher quality wood. If your board is too warped, then you will have a hard time getting the corners to line up right when you cut them all at a 45 degree angle. Last, try to match the color. Even within the same group, there seemed to be a lot of variation in color. I had to pull down and line up probably 15 planks so I could see them all together to get three that seemed straight and to match in color.







Step 2) You will need some cardboard for the backing. We got ours at a furniture store. You will want your cardboard pieces to be at least an inch bigger than the artwork that you are framing and an inch smaller that the outside edge of the eventual finished frame.





Step 3) Attach your artwork to your cardboard. I just taped along the edges since that would be covered by the frame. You could also do some double sided tape or some glue on the back - just something that will keep the artwork in place.





Step 4) Cut the boards at the desired sizes at 45 degree angles. If you have your artwork already on the cardboard then you can just line up the wood and see where you would like the frame. Then mark the first side and top pieces of wood off and do the cutting there. If you plan it right, two sides can be done with just three cuts. Once the first two pieces are cut, then just measure the rest of the cuts off of those two pieces. This is a little tricky though if the wood has some warping to it. So make sure you pay attention to both ends of the sides matching up rather than the middle of the sides.

I borrowed a friends miter saw. This made the cuts really easy. But I don't think it would be too hard to cut by hand if you had to.





Step 5) Attach the sides with L shaped brackets. A four pack of these is just a couple dollars at Lowes. At first I did just one bracket per corner, but since the frames were so large, they were still pretty wobbly. Two brackets per frame made them pretty stable.

One tip here is to make sure the screws for your bracket are not longer than you boards are thick.







Steps 6 & 7) Attach the cardboard to the frame. I used a staple gun to get it through the cardboard and into the wood. I am sure there are a few other options. Then get some hangers and hanging wire and attach that to the sides. You will want to attach that about one third the way down from the top of the frame. Make sure that they line up exactly on both sides.





Step 8) Find a spot that you like and hang them on the wall. These are each framing two feet by three feet posters.





We think they turned out pretty well. We also made a frame for a map that is about 4.5 feet by 3 feet.