DIY Canvas Frame

I'm going to write another post soon sharing the project that required me to create a frame, but first I'd like to share with any readers out there how you can make your own frame for a canvas (or other "thick" piece of art with edges that can be nailed into) with trim, a nail gun, and a small saw. You will also need paint or stain.

Here is what I am talking about:

I painted this oil painting of Matt and I while in an art class at a community college. The art teacher showed me how to frame the painting myself fairly cheaply and easily.

Using two types of trim, you can create a frame for canvases that does not cover any of the painting. Depending on where you get your trim (and paint or stain), it can be fairly inexpensive. Not as fancy as having it professionally framed, but certainly cheaper, and makes your artwork look more polished than just hanging it without a frame. (Of course those canvases that are 2" thick are meant to be painted on the edge and hung like that, but they are also very pricey - if you want to get the thin kind, this can make the edge look finished.)

To prepare your trim:

1. You'll need two types. One type is pictured below. The other can be seen in later pictures. The first type of trim is skinny and will make an inside layer for your frame. I used a piece that is 6/8" wide and about 1/4" thick, and I luckily had several 4' long pieces leftover in our garage that afforded me plenty to cover my two smallish canvases. You want this trim to have rounded edges on one side. The second type of trim forms the outer layer of the frame. For the oil painting of Matt and I, I used trim that is 1 1/4" wide and 3/16" thick ... but for the current frame, I used pieces that were 1 1/4" wide and 3/8" thick, because that's what I had. This trim should have square corners all around. (Mine actually had one edge rounded since I was using leftovers again, but I hid it to the back.)

2. Make sure you have enough of it. To do this, measure all the sides of the canvas and add the lengths. For mine, a total of about 7' would cover it (two sides a little under 1 1/2', two sides about 2'). But, even if your canvas could be covered with one length of trim, I recommend getting two smaller pieces or two regular pieces and trying to use the leftover on something else. Now, if you are wanting to be most cost effective, one piece is going to be what you want, but my method of making a frame requires two pieces. You could also get one long piece and cut it in half. As long as you have a little extra wiggle room, this could work. Since I was doing two canvases, I needed two pieces of trim anyway, so I used both pieces to work on one canvas, then the other. This will make more sense in a bit when I explain how to create the frame without having to measure the trim!

3. Stain or paint both sides of all the trim pieces. Paint is easy and black always looks good, but I chose stain this time because I had some leftover Red Oak I really like and thought it would go nicely with the beige and blue in my picture.

     *SUPER AWESOME TIP FOR STAINING or using polyurethane: I HATE getting that stuff on my hands. When you go to wash your hands, it just gets even worse. Olive oil will get it off really, really magically. When staining the growth chart ruler, I went to tap the stain lid closed and the stain popped and speckled my arm like a cheetah. But, rubbing olive oil over it took it right off. After using the oil, wash a second time with soap to get the oil and leftover residue off.

Staining the skinny "inner" trim pieces.

To create the frame:

1. This is easier with a buddy. I had my dad help me. You'll need all your trim pieces, a nail gun (or, if you don't have one of those but can think of a different way that works for you, let me know!), and a small saw.

2. Lay one of the skinny trims on one edge of the canvas with the edge of the trim square with one edge of the canvas. You want the rounded edges to face AWAY from the painting. You can square the trim with the canvas edge using another loose piece of trim (now we are getting to why you want at least two pieces of trim). Make the front of the trim flush with the front of the canvas, or make the canvas stick forward a tiny bit if you prefer. Hold the trim aligned and attach it to the wood on the back of the canvas with the nail gun.

Shoot the nail straight down into the trim and through it to the wood strip that is the canvas backing. I like to use three nails - one per end and one in the middle - for this part.

Don't do this! Dad accidentally shot one at the wrong angle and it cut through the painting. Luckily, he was able to pull it back out and I smoothed the canvas back down. I will paint over it or mod podge the back of the hole to keep it from opening up. Angle the nails away from the front of the canvas!

3. Here's where that other trim really comes in handy. The first piece of trim should hang over the edge of the canvas (I used 4' pieces, so they hung off 1 1/2' to 2' extra). Leave that. Turn the canvas one rotation. Align the new piece of trim against the previous piece to make it flush. Nail it down.

4. Now, cut off the excess of the FIRST trim piece. Because you have a second piece in place, you can set your tiny saw against that and cut the trim off just flush without having to measure any lengths. Yes, there will be a cut end that you have to stain or paint later after lightly sanding, but that's pretty easy.

Cutting off excess of piece #1.

Another shot of the same task, with second layer of trim.

5. Use the newly cut piece to form the next edge. Same as before, align the trim piece you'll be adding against the piece that had excess hanging off. Leave the excess of what we'll now call piece #3.

6. Cut the excess off piece #2.

7. Use excess from piece #2 to add the final edge, following the same pattern. 

8. Once all edges have been covered, you should have two edges still with a small amount of excess hanging over to cut off (as long as your pieces were long enough to cover two sides as mine were ... alternately, you could use 4 very short pieces, just a little longer than each edge of the canvas, and the only cutting you'd have to do would be at the end to remove small excesses. Depends on how you want to do it and what you have to work with).

9. Once you have one layer of trim with all excess cut off, do the whole thing over with the second type of trim. Aligning this is a little more up to you, but you want at least a little bit of the trim to overhang on the FRONT of the artwork. You can try to center it on the first type of trim if you want, but since this requires a steadier hand and a lot of checking, my dad and I aligned the top layer of trim with the back edge of the first layer to give in a nice inset. It will go like this: Do piece #1, align #2 with piece #1 and attach, cut #1, attach #3, cut #2, attach #4, cut #3 and #4.

Aligning top later of trim with back of first layer to create an inset on the front.

Dad did all the nailing (except when my mom helped for a brief interval) because I don't like the nail gun.

10. Lightly sand and stain or paint the rough edges, and you are done!

That was a cut edge.

See the nice inset?

Both canvases.

I know these last pictures aren't nice full shot pictures, but since I'm planning to have another post soon focusing on the actual art itself, I didn't want to give it away too much - you can look for that post soon to see what I was working on (another project down!) and see the frame as it looks when the picture is hung and looking good. 

I hope this one was clear enough - I didn't get a ton of pictures during the process. It was really hot in my parents' barn and dad needed to go do something, so we went pretty fast. If you have questions about how exactly a certain step is supposed to go, let me know and I'll try to explain it more fully. 

Good luck if you try making your own frame this way!