We had this beautiful poster for a long time and we always just taped it to the wall. It is a pretty poster and it looked just fine on its own, but I always thought it would look stunning in a frame.
Getting a poster or picture framed at a store can get rapidly expensive with the size of your poster. When I called Michael’s about a quote for framing this poster, they said that their minimum offer was $120! That’s over 5 times the price of the poster! I wasn’t ready to shell out that kind of money. So decided to do it by myself. Also, it is just such a fun and easy thing to do. I like doing these things while listening to my audio books (one of the many wonderful things I picked up from my mother-in-law).
So here is what you will need.
1. A frame. Pick a frame that is a few inches bigger in both width and height than your poster.
2. A mat board at least the size of the frame.
3. Pencil
4. Xacto knife or some other kind of cutter for cutting the mat board. I used a rolling cutter and self-healing mat for the purpose. I already had these handy from my sewing projects so I just used them. I used the xacto knife for the corners.
5. Ruler.
Steps
1. Take the insert from the frame and map the boundaries of the insert on the mat board. Cut the mat board.
2. Now that you have the size of the mat board that will fit in your frame, you need to cut a hole in it through which the picture or poster could show through. For this, first measure the size of your poster. Cut a hole in the mat board, centered in height and width, that is at least an inch smaller than the poster. You can judge this for yourself. It really depends on how much of the poster you are willing to hide behind the mat board.
3) Tape the poster to the back of the mat board. I usually only tape at the top so that the poster can hang freely and smoothly. Then place the mat board + poster combination in the frame and lock them in. This usually varies frame to frame. The instructions on the frame should help.
Srivani's blog 