Make Your Own Collage Frame

One of the rooms affected in our remodel is my main level family room. I’ve been redecorating it and one of the things I wanted was a collage photo frame.

I’ve seen a variety of these all over the place, but I either couldn’t find one that I liked just right, or one that wasn’t ridiculously priced. When that usually happens, the best solution is to make your own, right? Well that was what I did.

I headed to my local thrift store and picked up an assortment of frames for a total of $5.50.

Since I had everything else on hand, that was my total cost for this project – SWEET!

Step 1: Clean off the frames, then take some E6000 (or other really strong glue) and glue your frames together in the desired collage. I stuck some glass casserole dishes on top of mine to secure them together.

I probably left mine to dry for about 4 hours or so. I’m sure they were done before then, but I got distracted by other things going on in my home (kids, laundry, etc.).

Step 2: Drill a hole in the bottom of each frame the size of your stick. (I used sucker sticks that I had lying around my house. You can grab them in the cake decorating section of Wal-Mart or any craft store, but any sort of round stick will do). Take some more E6000 and glue the sticks into the holes at the bottom of the frames.

Step 3: I had a piece of wood leftover from my “Family Motto” sign, so I trimmed that down to 24” x 5” to use as my base, and made marks where each of the sticks would go.

Step 4: Then went ahead and drilled holes where the marks were. I tried to drill as far as I could without going through the wood so there would be more support for my sticks.

Step 5: Trim the sucker sticks down to the appropriate sizes, then grab the E6000 one last time and glue the sticks into the holes of your base.

Step 6: Now comes the painting. First I primed it all.

I knew I wanted to distress the frame and have some bluish tones showing through, so next I applied a coat of Krylon Ocean Breeze blue spraypaint – leftover from my Summer Activity Board.

Last I applied white spray paint. Once all the paint was dry, I sanded it down to create the distressed look. Here’s a close-up so you can see the hint of blue showing through.

With pictures of my favorite people, this baby is all done!

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