Framed Letters

A couple of people have asked me how I made the framed "D" for Duncan's room...way back when I was pregnant with Roper I made an "R" for him and an "M" for Mason (see this post). I also made one for my nephew that was horizontal with all three of his initials across it. The original inspiration was something I saw in the Restoration Hardware catalog, and since that was almost 3 years ago I can no longer find the picture!



These are pretty easy to make...I should have taken pictures as I was working on them but I didn't (sorry). I hadn't planned to post the "how-to" on my blog, but it should be pretty easy to explain.



You will need:
-a frame
-matboard with a letter cut out
-leftover fabric
-spray adhesive

The Frame:
You really could use any size, and it might be determined by how much fabric you have. For all three of mine I used a 16x20 frame that I picked up from Hobby Lobby (their frames are 50% off for three weeks each month). The frames that I picked out did not have the metal cording on the back for hanging, but the nice lady at Hobby Lobby put it on them for me and only charged a couple of dollars.

Matboard:
Hobby Lobby also sells matboard and they will cut out letters (and other shapes) for a small charge (maybe $3.00 or so?). I asked them to cut the matboard to 12x16 (note that if you choose a different size frame you will need to adjust the outer dimensions of the matboard -- it will "float" inside the frame so just decide how much space you want between the outside edge of the matboard and the inside edge of the frame).

Then I asked them to cut a letter out of the middle of the mat board (centered of course). Note that you won't need the actual letter that they cut out, just the 12x16 matboard with the silhouette of the letter cut out in the middle. They let me choose from different letter styles, and I chose a simple Roman font for all 3. In hindsight I kind of wish I had used a lowercase "d," oh well.

Fabric:
I used leftover fabric in mine, but there are lots of possibilities here...you could use scrapbook paper or wallpaper or wrapping paper. I like the fabric because I just used leftover scraps and it ties in with your bedding, window treatments, etc.

Make sure the fabric is ironed out flat. You will need one larger rectangle of fabric for the outer edge, cut to 16x20 (I just took the glass out of the frame and traced around the edges & then cut). The smaller rectangle of fabric will need to be slightly smaller than 12x16.

Spray adhesive:


Assembly:
Apply the spray adhesive to the back of the matboard and then stick it to the smaller piece of fabric.

Then, apply the spray adhesive to the back of the smaller piece of fabric and stick it on the larger piece of fabric (centered of course, unless you just don't want it centered).

Now you should have your matboard on top, stuck to the small piece of fabric (which shows through the letter silhouette), stuck to the large piece of fabric (which shows on the outside edge of the matboard).

Then frame the whole thing like you would a picture. I'm not used to writing up tutorial type things so I hope this all made sense!

I'm not sure what the total cost of this was, I'm terrible at remembering prices, but I think this is pretty close:
$25 for frame (normally priced at $49.99)
$2 to add metal cording to back of frame
$8 for matboard
$3 charge to cut matboard
$6 for spray adhesive

So about $44 all said and done, unless you also have to buy fabric. You might have noticed that Duncan's "D" has a lot of flaws because I didn't have one big piece of fabric to use inside the letter cutout. I had to piece together a lot of little pieces and when you look closely you can totally see it. But I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to these things so I'm okay with it. And I don't think he'll mind. :)