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I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!  We did for sure!  I am always trying to think of thrifty, unique and thoughtful gifts to make my family and friends each year.  I love making custom pieces that they wouldn’t receive from anyone else.  This year I decided to make my niece and nephew name signs for their room.  I decided that this would be our teacher gifts this year as well, only I will use their last names!

Today I am showing you the sign I made my for niece Londyn.

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I found a GREAT flickr photo site on Pinterest.  It is an amazing source for letter photos.  There are literally hundreds of each letter.  You can see that site HERE!  You simply download for FREE and print from your own printer… Pretty darn cheap and easy!  I found her letters and got started on the rest.

I bought 6 4×6 frames at the Dollar Tree for a buck a piece.

I removed all the plastic and glass from the frames like this…

I gave them all a coat of my very favorite…

Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch

You can get it at Home Depot.

I used Heirloom White for the frames…

Here they are drying…

While those were drying, I started on my wood.

I used a 2×10 for my sign.  This is heavy and will sit alone on a table without support.  If you are wanting to hang yours on a wall, you could also use a 1×10.

I paid $4.50 for an 8ft board and made 2 signs from it.

I cut a 36″ piece and painted it Sweet Pea.

While that was drying I finished up my frames.  I added the glass back into each frame and also added my new FREE letter photos.  Once I attached the back I gently pulled the support piece off the back of each frame.  That was quite easy to do on dollar store frames 😉

Then, I added a bit of hot glue to the corners of each frame and attached them to my new pink board.

The result…

What do you think?

I am so excited to also make these for the kiddos teachers.  I am planning on staining the boards and going with a neutral frame color so they can use them anywhere.

If you are making a longer name, I would suggest going with 3×5 frames and using a 2×6 or a 2×8 as your board.

And now let’s do the math… I paid $6 for the frames, $2.50 per sign for the wood, and the pictures were free.  That’s about $10 a sign if you count the spray paint… My kind of gift!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Let me know if you have any questions!

~Whitney

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278 Comments

  1. I’m having trouble getting my letters to print portrait style. When I print a letter out on Flickr it looks right until its printed then it comes out landscape. If I do the sign landscape style it will have to be a bigger sign. Can you tell me how to fix it?

      1. I downloaded the large or regular file BUT I cropped the pics down to size using my photo editing program. I use PS Elements and iPhoto, but I know Picasa, Kodak and other free programs crop photos as well. Hope this helps!

  2. This is fantastic. I recently saw these selling on a website and I fell in love with them until i saw the price ( $149-179 a peice). I’m so happy I stumbled upon yoour site, thanks!

  3. Did you use photo paper and what size of the picture did you print off of the Flickr site to fit in the 4×6 frame.

  4. love this idea!!!!!! i am clueless when it comes to flickr so i don’t know which photos i am allowed to download. any guidance/ideas??

  5. Thank you for the link to the site and for the idea! I like the choice of gray scale images that you have done for your sign – very nice color combination.
    I am glad you gave the link to download the letters – I have been searching images like that to make a journal for my husband. Thanks to you I now can stop searching and get my hands busy.
    Thank you, thank you, thank you! 🙂

        1. I just changed them to black and white on my photo editing program. Most free programs will do that for you 🙂

  6. This is awesome!!! I’m not kidding I recently spent $60 for something like this for my sister as a bridal shower gift! I cannot wait to make these on my own for so much less!!

  7. u guys seriously ROCK!! I have been wanting to make something similar to this for my sons new tween “industrial” bedroom and now I can for not a lot of money. THANK YOU CREATIVE GIRLIES!!!!!! You guys never let me down 🙂

  8. I love this idea! But I am having troubles trying to “pin” a letter or save it, any ideas what I am doing wrong??? Thanks!

    1. Are you trying to download it on Flickr? This is how… I click on the picture and then click ‘view all sizes’ in the top right. It opens a screen where it allows you to download any size.

      1. Don’t know if its just my computer or what. When I’m on Flickr and I want to print a letter its printing them landscape instead of portrait. Is that bc of the letter style I have chosen? So new to pinterest and flickr.

  9. I absolutely LOVE your sign! Thanks so much for sharing this! I had found the flickr letters earlier in the year and then when I went back to look at them again couldn’t remember where I saw them. I’m so exctited to use the free images to make some signs for gifts, thanks again! 🙂

  10. Thanks so much for the link! I have a question about saving the image. (I am a Flickr newbie). When I right click on the picture, it tells me that it has “some rights reserved”. What is the best way to save it? Do I have to email each one to myself?

    1. I click on the picture and then click ‘view all sizes’ in the top right. It opens a screen where it allows you to download any size. Don’t worry… It took me a LONG time to learn this myself several months ago! It’s confusing!
      Let me know if you have any other questions!

      1. This may be a dumb question, but I have tried and tried to rotate them from printing horizontal to vertical and it’s just not working…any tips??

        1. I am having the same problem, my husband is about to pull his hair out trying to figure this out for me 🙂 Any advice would be welcome!!

        2. I was having the same problem at first, but then I realized that if you rotate the picture when you download it (and it comes up in the picture viewing program), then print it, it does print it normal and it is not cut off. And then you can change if you want the whole page or whatever size you want and it does print it normal.

      2. I click on the sizes, but no matter which size I choose it still prints a really big picture of the letter. How did you them to print smaller?

      3. Thank you! This is an amazing project and I have already been out to pick up my supplies!

        When you printed your letters, what size did you select for the 4X6 frames?
        Looks like the options are Medium 500 • Medium 640 • Large • Original

          1. Did you ever get the info on how to resize for 4/6 photo. No matter what size I download it cuts off top and bottom. Help!!!!

          2. I download the full size photo. I then open it in my photo editing program and crop it to 4×6. Then send it to your printer. You have to crop the photos.

      4. I love your idea and would love to try them over Christmas Break. I am having trouble printing the letters in a 5 by 7 size. Any specific ideas?

  11. I’ve been wondering where to find the free letter photos- thanks SO much for the link. Cute, cute project…wonder if I can find time to make some of my own……

  12. I can’t even tell you how much I love you right now!!! Yay Yay Yay for an excellent christmas gift idea!!!!! I have always wanted to make some of those pictures but the idea of finding and photographing all of those shapes overwhelmed me! Thanks so much for finding them for free!!! I don’t know how I could ever thank you, so I will just pin and tweet the heck out of this post and hope that will suffice!