Simple Photo Corners

“Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.” -Barbara Bush

This simple little idea came about after we decided to create a photo wall filled with pictures of family and friends. You know how it works… you need those damn mats for it to look good! Like many people, we’re just scraping by so buying all those mats got a little scary!   Then we thought about using those old-fashioned photo corners but we were out of those too and weren’t about to make a special run for photo corners!

Then we got playing around with different types of paper, cereal boxes and spray paint and we came up with a solution, at least for some of the photos. It’s a super simple and super easy way to make pictures look better.

In this demonstration we used a black 8 x 10 frame and a 5 x 7 photo. Just use a frame that’s way too big for the photo.

Since we can’t recycle cereal boxes we decided to cut one apart to fit inside the 8 x 10 frame – then we painted it black. Then we used an old crappy book we never read and tore out some pages to make photo corners (don’t worry, it wasn’t great literature. in fact it was from the clearance table). The photo corners we made were oversized but you can make them any size you want by the thickness of the strip of paper you cut or by trimming it down after making one. Either way is easy …see below.

We didn’t actually cut these pages – we held a straight edge on the paper and just tore it. Yes, that was the look we were goin for.

After we folded them into a corner, we used scotch tape to tape the seam (above) together on the backside. Don’t worry, you won’t see it …cause it’s the back. Then we trimmed off the excess and there ya go – now do it three more times.

Then we placed each photo corner over all four corners of the photo – then applied a little glue (Tacky glue works well) to each backside of the photo corners. Center the photo in the middle of the frame by eyeballing or measuring (we eyeballed it). If you’re off slightly you can move it a little while the glue is still wet. For the love of God, don’t overthink it 🙂

It’s that simple! We grabbed a flier out of the recycle bin to show you a different version. Make the corner exactly the same as above but use those scissors that cut a decorative edge.

The variations on this project are endless…

I REALLY wanted to show you another cool frame we did, but I have to convince my mother to let me. It’s of her from the 60’s with big hair! Check back!!

Update: Mom said yes! Here’s another variation on what can be done. The colored paper was taken from magazine advertisements. The white background was a sheet of white sketch paper. Simple!! Thanks Mom!

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