Four Frames, Scrap Fabric And An Afternoon

A stroll through my neighborhood yard sales last weekend was all the inspiration I needed to make some beautiful framed prints for my living room.



It’s no secret that I love yard sales. Almost every weekend you can find me — giant canvas Sweet Potato Queen tote bag in hand, poking around and looking for used “treasure.”



Last weekend, I snagged these 4 beautiful frames for just $12! I don’t think they have ever been used, and the few nicks I see can easily be covered with a furniture pen.

I didn’t know exactly what I would do with them at first, so I went out to do the rest of my Saturday errands. While at the fabric store, I got a bright idea. I saw some interesting and elegant sack-cloth toile prints and thought the might look pretty in my new frames. I asked the sales person for a swatch of two prints I liked, thinking I could take them home and see if they matched my living room, but, to my surprise, she cut off a pretty big slice of fabric. She said since it was a repeating pattern, and the edge was ragged already, she’d just give me the whole thing. How nice!



When I got home, I found that with some careful cutting of the fabric, I had enough to get one panel out of one swatch, and three panels out of the other.

Then, a quick trip down to the craft store for:

3- 14 x 17 art mats, the kind with the peel-and-stick adhesive already on one side (They were on sale for $1.99 each!)

Now, I was on my way. I also dug out an old roll of brown craft paper left over from last Christmas, my tailor’s chalk, an X-acto blade, a sharpie marker and my handy Salem Ruler quilting ruler. I plopped everything on my cutting table.



Next thing I did was lay the fabric out and put the frames around on the fabric in different ways until I came up with a “picture” that I though looked good. Then I traced around the inside of the frame, onto the fabric with my tailor’s chalk.



And created a guide to work from.



Then I placed the empty frame over the adhesive board and used the sharpie to trace around the inside of the frame, to create a guide there. Then I used my Salem Ruler and the X-acto blade to cut the shape out of the adhesive board.



Next, I used the chalk guide to cut my “print” out of the fabric. Then I peeled the adhesive off and stuck the fabric to the board. I had to reposition several times to get the fabric grain straight.



When I was satisfied with the way the fabric looked, I flipped it over and slipped into the frame. Then I trimmed the edges of the fabric around the adhesive board and replaced the print in the frame.

I didn’t use any glass, and the board was a snug fit inside the frame, so I didn’t even need any staples or finishing nails to hold the picture in place. Then I cut a piece of craft paper off the roll and trimmed it to fit the frame and used a glue stick to glue it to the back of the print for a finished look.





Mr. Lite Green was nice enough to hunt through his tool box and find some eye hooks and wire, and put them on each picture so I could hang them up.





This was a fun and easy project that took only a few hours to complete. And for only about $18 of actual cash out of my wallet, I got four one-of-a-kind prints to hang on my living room wall. Now that’s what I call “bang-for-your-buck”.