I bought this beautiful poster forever ago at Target for a clearance price of $6.98. I could never find a suitable frame for it - since it’s 3ft by 2ft, and I could never justify spending more then 10 bucks on a frame to hang up a thick piece of paper with a pretty image printed on it.

It’s been following me around forever, and my cat kinda chewed the corners of it (it was wrapped and mounted on cardboard, and she loves cardboard). It’s a little dog eared on the edges, and I almost just threw it away.

When I was moving recently I noticed that I have an abundance of frameless frames. I decided to cut up the poster and put it in the frames to make a pseudo-photo composite. Like the ones i do on flickr.

Here’s how I did it:

First I took all the glass out of my frames and laid it out on the poster, to kind of get an idea how I wanted to cut it up (sorry i didn’t get an image of this step). I left about 1/2 inch space between pieces of glass because I wanted to keep as much of the poster as possible, but you can do more if that’s how you roll.

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Step 1 - cut out the pieces of the poster you want to keep.

Then I traced around the glass (after making sure they were all laid out straight and level). I took my exacto knife and a metal ruler and very carefully cut out the pieces, making sure to keep the scrap of poster with all the holes in it. (see left)

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Step 2: Tape the empty poster on the wall.

After I carefully cut all the pieces out I taped the scrap poster to the wall. I center all my photos/paintings/etc on my walls at 61″ from the floor (so the center of the frame is at 61″). That way everything is at the same eye level throughout. (see right). That way you will have a better idea on where to place the framed pieces, instead of doing unnecessary measuring! Unless of course you LOVE measuring.

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Step 3: Hang the frames!

Now my favorite part - framing and hanging! Just frame all your pieces and hang them in their respective holes in the poster, you’ll start to see it coming together! After every piece is hung, tweak the frames a little bit. The frames I got (at Wal-mart for under 2 dollars each), didn’t have clips that automatically came centered. It took me the longest to make sure the frames were sitting level, I’m kind of a freak about level photos. (see left)

After that I took the frames down and gave them a good cleaning, and then removed the poster remains. I saved them in case I wanted to put it somewhere else, ’cause I HATE measuring. I just hung them all back up and stood back and admired my work. Then I texted it to my friend and made her jealous, but it’s alright - cause I love her!

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  Final Step: Admire your work.
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You can buy the same poster I used at Art.com for $9.99. Or you can just use any poster you want! I ended up using 6 8×10″, 3 5×7″ and 4 4×6″ frames.