How to Make Burlap Picture Mats

Lately I have an itch to paint a wall or build something. I can’t describe it, sometimes, you just have to go with it right? But it takes me forever to decide what to do, so while I think about what my next big project is going to be I want to show you how to make burlap picture mats. Since I’ve been on a picture theme lately with my new gallery wall of travel photos, I also got some other pictures up in our hallway.  From France of course.

Last summer at the Haven Conference Online Fabric Store was one of the sponsors, who gave us each two yards of fabric in our swag bags – 1 yard of burlap and 1 yard of a print. They had the best idea and created an fabric swap, so if someone else had a yard you wanted, you could swap yours in exchange for a yard you liked better. It allowed us to meet each other and to Instagram our pics, which was a genius idea. I ended up with this amazing fabric.

I wanted to use the burlap and had the perfect idea, to wrap some picture mats in it. I found these photos at a thrift store and loved them for their square shape. Usually picture frames are rectangles, so I grabbed these modern square ones for only $5 each. There were three of them in red, yellow and blue, with toy pictures in them, not exactly my style, but I knew I could make something good. I almost always buy frames in thrift store, because they are far cheaper, plus I always end up painting the frames myself or cutting my own picture mats.

Here is how I took apart the frames to reuse them {pictured below}. Now when you get nice picture frames at a flea market or garage sale, they may seem all nice and pretty, but you can make them better! Don’t be afraid to take them apart and make them fit your style. Any frame and its inside parts {mat, glass, backing} can be put back together.

1. Using a utility knife or exacto, cut off the paper backing on the frame, if it has one.
2. Pull out any staples or metal parts holding the content in the frame. You can replace these later with glazier points or with heavier duty tape.
3. Take out what is in the frame, clean the glass.
4. For this project I wanted to reuse the mats, but they were glued to the toy pictures, so I pulled apart the mat from the picture, which was on a piece of foam board. Since this wrinkled the mats, I wanted to cover them up. Hence my idea to use the burlap.

Next you get on with covering your mat. Place the mat over the burlap. I didn’t take a ton of photos of this part, but there are some good photos on the tutorial here and here. Cut out the burlap so you have a one inch border all around the mat.

Then you will hot glue the burlap right to the back of the mat. Watch your fingertips! The glue gets pretty hot, so use an old pencil end to stick the burlap onto the glue you’ve placed right on the mat.

To cover the middle edge, cut an X in the middle of the burlap and cut off the excess. Do the same as above and hot glue the burlap onto the back of the frame. Be careful not to cut too far into the corners and just glue down any fabric as needed. Soon you’ll have a burlap wrapped picture mat like this.

I spray painted the formerly primary colored frames in white and printed out black and white photos of our three favorite landmarks in France. Like my gallery wall, I printed these at Walgreens. Since they don’t print square photos, I ordered these in 12×18, since the opening of my mats was just over 11 inches, I needed to make sure they fit. I purposely selected photos that I knew I could cut off one end to make sure they fit inside the mats. Then you just put your fame back together – glass, mat, photo, backing. To hold it all in the frame, I used glazier points.

Having three frames allowed me to hang this in a way I’ve always wanted to at home, with one of the frames closer to the floor. Often people hang pictures too high. The middle of the frame is supposed to be where your eye falls, or at about 5 feet, 6 inches from the floor. Nobody wants to arch their neck up just to look at a picture right?

The wall at our landing of the stairway was a perfect spot for these. This space is at the halfway mark upstairs, since we have a split staircase and “landing” areas at both the front and back stairs. Technically we have three parts of the stairs, two that go from the first floor to the landing and then one flight that goes to the second floor. It’s a nice feature in our old house.

The blue mirror was a $1 find at a flea market, I simply love it. The color is perfect and is a nice bright touch to my otherwise neutral decor.

The twigs in the clear vase on the floor are from the dollar store. I change out the berries for the season, but kept these silver ones in from the holidays because I just love the metallic touch they bring.

These frames are a far cry from the before state, don’t you think? And the texture of the burlap against the glossy photos and white frames is the perfect contrast against the walls, which are Creamy Mushroom by Behr.

I love using picture frames in my decorating. They are such an inexpensive way to decorate a space, and you can do all kinds of things with them. And these came out so well. Usually all my mats are just flat and I could see doing this with fabric too.

Sharing with Beyond the Picked Fence Under $100 Link Party, Handmade Projects at Tip Junkie, Work It Wednesday at The Turquoise Home.