Personalized Fabric Frames

I'm not sure if I spoke about this on this blog or not, but I am in the process of decorating my children's room.  Both of them share a room so I am trying to decorate it to fit their style. 

For my daughter's side of the room, I made the frame up above.  I will be making one like this for my son's side also, just with different fabric and different colors.  The colors of the room are red, white, and blue.  Their walls are two different shade of light gray...so I figured picking these colors would make a great contrast.

Here is how I did it.......

Step One:

Find yourself a picture frame.  It can be one that you already have around the house that you don't need or one that you purchase.  For ours....I "shopped" our house...so to speak..and ended up finding a set of Home Interior Pictures that I didn't use anymore.  The set was perfect to use because it already gave me two of the same size frames.  Hence...the before picture below:

Step Two:

Take the backing off of the frame and take the picture itself out.  For this particular frame, I had to tear apart the paper that was sealed onto the back.  Then, I had to take the picture out itself.

Step Three: 

Measure the picture itself.  This will give you an idea of how much fabric you are going to need.  This picture turned out to be 19.5 inches x 13 inches.  So...one and a half yards of fabric worked just fine. Then, go out and purchase your fabric or find some around the house that you may already have.  I don't have a picture for this step.  You just have to go out and do it :) 

I did learn that fabric with small/tiny designs on them would work best if you are going to use letters to personalize it.  Also, it's important to keep in mind the color scheme of the room when picking out your fabric and the colors that you want your letters to be.  In my case, for this particular frame, I wanted it to have red and white fabric with white letters.  Hence, the red fabric with little white dots :)

Step Four (Lettering):

For the letters, I just went into my Microsoft Word Program on my computer and found a font that I liked.  For this frame, I used the "Curlz MT" font.  You want to make the font big enough to fit onto one sheet of paper.  So in this case, it was the Curlz MT font at 620.  Once you have figured this out, print out your letters on either cardstock (I used plain white), scrapbook paper, or construction paper.  When you print them out, you must go into the printer features on the computer and select the "mirror" setting.  Since your letters will be facing the opposite direction when in the frame.

**Note:  You can also go to the local craft store and find letters already made to fit into the frame.  I chose to use my computer because it was free...vs. going out to the store and spending $1.50 to $2.00 on each letter**

Step Five:

Cut them out.

Step Six:

Take the original picture and measure it against the fabric, making sure it fits.

Step Seven:

Staple the fabric to the picture.  Make sure it is a tight fit when you do this.

It should look like this when it is done:

Step Eight:

Take your letters, situate them onto the fabric picture and start attaching them.  I used my handy dandy glue dots to attach them.  You can also attach any embellishments that you may have.  I used some silk flowers that I had laying around the house.

Step Nine:

Place the original picture back in the frame and secure the back. 

And voila...you have your own little personalized fabric frame :)

The coolest thing about this project is that since I basically used everything I had in my house except for the fabric, the total cost was only $5.00!!  You can't beat that!  Shopping your house is the best advice I have heard yet :)