Home decor can be so wasteful. Often it ends up gracing the shelves at your favorite secondhand store becoming a testament of wasted time, wasted resources and of course, wasted money. It might sit there, unused and unloved, until someone like me – or you! – comes along ready to make it into something new. Such is the case with most photo frames that end up in a thrift store. I absolutely love coming across an amazing photo frame that only needs a touch of love. Like my DIY Upcycled Shabby Chic Photo Frame, this Upcycled Photo Frame Key Holder for Walls is the perfect way to dress up that old photo frame! It is a super simple upcycled home decor project that breathes new life into an old item!
The beautiful thing about this key holder for walls is that it can be changed up so easily! You can change it with the seasons or simply because you feel like it! In our case, we like to keep it updated with however we’re feeling! Sometimes we will do the seasons and at other times, we will simply leave it with a colorful background. Since your key holder for walls has glass in the frame portion, it’s great for using a dry erase marker on to help yourself remember something or just for leaving cute notes to the rest of your family! They’ll see each note as they grab their keys in the morning!
DIY Photo Frame Key Holder for Walls
This really is one of my favorite upcycled home decor projects and I’ll tell you why; it is so easy to make! These are fantastic if you’re looking for a unique way to earn extra cash since they can be made for less than $5.00 each – including the frame most of the time – are very quick to make up (meaning it is usually a good value for your time spent) and tend to sell very well! There are huge amounts of people who love decor such as this, but either don’t have the time nor the inclination to do the project themselves.
The instructions in the tutorial below are specifically for how we did the “You are my Sunshine” image that you see on the photo above. Once I’ve explained how we did that particular image, I’ll give a few quick instructions on how do do other designs and/or how to change things up a bit. Girl Child #1’s favorite song is “You are my Sunshine” (long story, but it makes her tear up every time she hears it), so we did this specific one for her.
You Will Need:
- Wooden Photo Frame in whatever size you prefer
- Command Hooks to fit the size of your frame
- Acrylic Paint in Sunshine Yellow
- Black paint pen
- Piece of Felt in the color of your choosing
- Black Dry Erase Marker
- Other Craft Embellishments You Prefer
To prep, clean both the frame itself and the glass front then cut your piece of felt to fit inside of your photo frame. You’ll want it a bit smaller than the frame itself so it is able to sit down inside like as photo would. The felt isn’t 100% necessary, but it will give your upcycled key holder for walls a bit of a backing instead of it being “just” the back of the frame itself.
If your photo frame isn’t in the greatest of condition, you may also want to consider using some sand paper to rub out any bad spots and a different color acrylic paint to bring it back to life before continuing on with the rest of the project.
On the back side of the glass, draw your sun outline. Ours was drawn freehand, but if you aren’t comfortable doing that, print out any photo of a design you like and trace it onto the glass before you paint. Remember to drawn it backwards from what you would like to have facing out. Your design will be on the inside of the glass so it will be reversed from what you draw and paint. After you have drawn and painted your sun, allow it to dry fully before moving onto the lettering.
For the lettering, again, your design will be reversed which means that you’ll need to write them backwards. Since I am not skilled enough to write backwards, I first wrote them on the front side of the glass with the dry erase marker then traced them with a black paint pen on the backside to get them correct and looking good.
Once your upcycled key holder for walls is fully dry, attach the Command hooks to the bottom of it. As I said in the supplies list, make sure that you’re using hooks that are the appropriate size for your frame. We used a frame with a depth of ¾” that perfectly matched THESE hooks. If your frame is larger, you will want to use a larger hook.
As I said earlier, it is super simple to change out your design if you don’t use permanent paint. You can do things such as a snowflake design for the holidays, tissue paper colors for everyday use and more! If you used acrylic paint, you can soften it with water and professional strength nail polish remover then use a razor blade to scrape the glass clean. Just be sure that your glass is wet when you scrape so you don’t end up scratching the glass.
If you find that the dry erase marker becomes hard to clean, using a bit of rubbing alcohol will remove it easily without leaving any trace of writing behind. This will come in handy if you’ve written a message that has been left on the glass for a while.
Are you ready to make your own key holder for walls? As I said earlier, it really is the perfect upcycled home decor project! It’s super cheap to make, incredibly easy and best of all, looks adorable! Have you made one? I would love to see your designs!
