Design on a Dime: Photo Mat Tutorial

Here is the photo frame mat project that I mentioned in Design on a Dime: Projects 5, 6 and 7. I love to find frames at Goodwill. Typically they are filled sweet 70's and 80's artwork. Unfortunately that does not go with my decor, so they call for a redesign. This can be accomplished really easily by painting the frame and redoing the mat. There is a great idea on painting a frame on Trey and Lucy, one of my favorite crafty blogs. But I will show you how to redo the mat quick and cheap.

Grab the mat, a pretty piece of scrapbook paper (or it could be an old map or old sheet music or any type of cool paper), an exacto knife and of course, Modge Podge.



Modge Podge the the wrong side of the paper to the mat and then cut off the excess with a razor or scissors.



Now use your exacto knife to cut an 'X' from the inner corners of the mat into the scrapbook paper.


It should look like this:


Trim back those excess corners a bit so that you can fold the paper back and Modge Podge it to the back of the mat.



Press the Modge Podged paper onto the mat on all 4 sides.

And you end up with a fresh looking mat. You can use some coordinating papers and do a few frames together for an interesting design. I would suggest using black and white photos so that the whole idea doesn't get too busy.