DIY Geometric Photo Mats

Excited to have the amazing Jenn from My Fabuless Life back today!

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One of my favorite ways to add a little bit more impact in a room is by adding mats to my photos. It’s amazing what they do to completely change the look of a single photo, or an entire gallery wall. But professional framing can get expensive, buying pre-cut mats is significantly less expensive, but can add up when you have an entire collection of pictures, and if you’re like me, and pick up lots of frames at thrift stores, they can come in odd sizes and be a little difficult to find mats for. At some point I realized that it couldn’t be that hard to make my own, and it was probably WAY less expensive. AND, bonus: they can be changed up a bit from the same old square openings for the photos. So today, I’m going to show you how simple it is to make your own DIY Geometric Photo Mats.

For the mat board, you can buy actual mat board at the craft store, but I found some heavy art paper with the paint and canvases at Hobby Lobby and a poster board size was only $2.69 so I bought that instead. It works GREAT, so no need to spend the actual money on mat board. Make sure what you buy is about the same weight as a thick cardstock.

Now to actually cut out the mat:

1. Trace the size of your frame onto the art board and cut it out.

2. Choose the shape you want and trace it onto the art board. I just cut out a few stencils on my Cricut. If you have a cutter big enough, you can just cut the whole thing on there, but I still have the little baby Cricut, so I cut the shapes out first, and then traced them.

3. Cut out the shape with an Xacto knife.

If you want to add a little extra something, you can embellish them with a little embroidery floss like I did to the one you see on the left. I used this same technique at Christmastime, and you can find the full rundown here.