Building an Extra-Large Frame | Emily Crump Photography

Building an Extra-Large Frame.

So I have been following this company on Instagram BFF Print Shop for a while now.  They are a great little start-up where you can purchase digital files of art for framing in your home.  We have several pieces from them that we love!  This past fall they decided to have a Fall Photo Contest to see who could come up with the best way to display a piece of their art in your home.  The art piece was a lovely fall landscape so we decided to take the challenge.

I have always been drawn to LARGE photos and art for my home, but unfortunately going big can get really expensive fast.  I was determined to not spend a small fortune on this project but to achieve the look I wanted.  Lately I have been buying vinyl stickers from a company called Fast Signs.  They are true to their name, super fast and great quality.  So I decided to take my digital art to them and have it printed BIG.  I had it printed on a vinyl banner 52in x 64in.  Once the banner came in my husband took to making a wooden frame to stretch the banner across.

We placed the frame on the back side of the banner and pulled tight.  Every few inches we put a few staples to secure it to the frame, being careful to make sure there were no wrinkles on the front print.

It took lots of pulling tight and lots of staples!

Next, we used another piece of wood to make a “cleat” to hang the stretched photo and frame to the wall.  We didn’t want to use traditional nails or screws because of the weight.

Put the other cleat onto the wall and level.

Now to make the outer frame.  We wanted a very large, chunky frame so we needed to make the outer frame a larger width.  Once that frame is complete we wanted to dry fit it over the stretched photo to make sure it fit before going any further.

It fit perfectly and we were able to start nailing our decorative molding to the frame.  We used wood glue first and then finished it off with nails to secure it.

Another fitting to make sure we were still on track and we started to putty all the corner gaps and nail holes.

Time to sand and paint.  We choose this Krylon Metallic Gold Leaf spray paint and it worked great!  Fast dry time, great coverage and no drips!

Once everything was dry it was time to hang and admire all our hard work.

 

Now you are probably wondering how much all this cost.  Could we have actually built that huge frame and stretched a very large print for relatively little money?  We sure did!  Take a look at the cost breakdown below.  We came in at $330 for EVERYTHING!

And if you are curious….we did win the fall photo contest! :). Leave us a comment if you liked this project, Building an Extra-Large Frame,  or if you have any questions about anything!