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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.
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…
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
Very awesome! I’ve tried to make a family sign like this before just googling shapes that looked like letters and it was such a pain! This helped like crazy! Thank you!
I am trying to make some signs for Christmas gifts but I cant figure out what size to download to be able to print them as a 3X5 or a 4X6. What size did you download?
I downloaded the medium or large size of each print and then resized them, or cropped them using elements. You can use almost any photo editing program to crop. I did look for letter that were a bit smaller because I was having the same issue. Hope this helps!
What kind of paper did you use and what size did you print to fit the 4×6 frames?? Thanks!!
I downloaded the medium or large size of each print and then resized them, or cropped them using elements. You can use almost any photo editing program to crop. I did look for letter that were a bit smaller because I was having the same issue. Hope this helps!
Making this for my sister for Christmas and I repinned it. Yay!!! So excited!!!
I am having problems cropping the pictures to the 4×6 size. I’ve tried both Windows Photo Gallery and Picnik.com, and both of them are not allowing the entire letter into the 4×6 rectangle. Can you be more specific in how you were able to do this? It’s such a great idea!!
This is such an amazing idea — I am super low on funds so I’m using it for a wedding gift and making the letters spell their last name. Thanks SO MUCH for posting, this is saving me a ton of money, and let’s me use my creative side 🙂
I am so excited to make these for Christmas gifts! Thanks for the GREAT idea!
Wanting to make several of these but getting so aggrevated bc when I get ready to print a letter I don’t know what size to ask for and when I play around with it the letter isn’t upright for a 3×5 or 4×6 and I would have to go side ways with it. Please help!
I downloaded the regular size file of each picture and then used my photo editing program to crop it to 4×6. Most editing programs will do this. Hope this helps!
Thank you for sharing this! I wanted to do this for a long time, but it is too much money! What program are you using to crop and edit your photos? I just tried and downloaded the one letter, and when I went to print it, it will cut off my letter. The letter photo is up and down, but the print wide and short…what do you think i should do?
Photoshop Elements 🙂
I have that program, but do not know how to use it…ugh!
This is just too cute. I noticed though that the brown frames are not the same as the white ones. The white ones have more detailing on them. Did you end up using different ones?
I made more than one… The brown frames are the ones I used for my nephew.
Love this idea. I missed out on the Free letter photos. Where would I obtain them? Thanks and enjoy your blog!!
This is really a cool idea… thanks for posting it, unless I am overlooking it, I do not see the link where I can go to download the free pictures. Could you please share this info again with instructions for printing, I would very much appreciate it.
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?
I’m having trouble getting the letters vertical too. Even when i’m changing view to portrait. any ideas?
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!
Can you please tell me how to download the letters from Flickr to my computer?
Thank you!
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!
Love this, Shanty girls! Sooo stinkin cute!! Genius! xoxo
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.
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??