DIY - Photo Mounting

First time mounting a picture on a piece of wood? Me too! Let's do this!

I found a tutorial on Pinterest on how to mount your own picture on wood. I've seen it available on Shutterfly and at Walmart's Photo Center, but the cost to have your pictures printed on these is a small fortune. I'm cheap so I thought I'd give this a go!

Supplies:
Plywood     - $2.50
Mod Podge - $7
Pictures       - $1
Sand Paper - ~$5
Spray Paint - $4

I bought a piece of scrap plywood at The Home Depot, something big enough to cut 3 pieces of 8"x 8" (or whatever size you desire).

Step 1:
Cut the plywood into the desired size, I had my husband help cut the wood into three 8"x 8" (I would just mess it up if I did it)

Step 2:
Sand down the sides of the wood. Once the wood is cut, it'll be jagged. I rounded the corners slightly to give it a softer look (that's the hubs hands, but I did the sanding!)

Step 3:
Spray Paint the top and sides of the wood pieces. Make sure all the excess dust is completely off the pieces. - let it dry completely. The wood absorbed a lot of the paint, so I had to spray several coats on the wood. You may want to consider painting the wood with regular paint with a paint brush..... just sayin'...

Step 4:
Trim your picture to fit the wood piece. I printed them so they would be 8"x 8", but of course, they were slightly too big, so I trimmed the edges of all the pictures.

Step 5:
Apply a generous amount of Mod Podge to the top of the wood

Step 6:
Place the picture on top of the Mod Podge and wipe off any excess glue around the corners -- this is to avoid the goopy glue balls

Step 7:
Let the glue dry completely, I let it sit for about 2 hours and watched some Netflix and drank a beer!

Step 8:
After it's dry, sand down the sides of the photo a bit to give it a distressed look. I used two different grits of sand paper. Fine and super fine (or as my husband tells me, 800 grit and 1000 grit). The super fine was to blend out any hard scratches the fine sand paper made. Now, I'm no pro (obviously) so it doesn't look that great...but it was my first time

Step 9:
Apply a thin layer of Mod Podge over the top the photos and the sides of the wood. This is to seal the photo and the paint to prolong the life of the project.

And once the top coat of Mod Podge is dry, all done!! I haven't figured how I am going to present these yet, but for now, standing them up on one side works great for now. It would be easy enough to mount a small picture hook on the back so they can be hung on the wall.

That's all for now!! Byyyye!