DIY Fabric Wall Panels

If I can do this, seriously, anyone can. Like your 5 year old can. This giant house to furnish/decorate, and a modest budget to accomplish it, so my appetite for crafty workmanship has skyrocketed. Let the DIY experiments begin with DIY Fabric Wall Panels!

It all started with this fairly large wall in the “formal” living room of our home…basically, the room that guests walk into after the entryway. Since we are not likely to use this room as often as back of the house {where the family/dining and kitchen areas are}, our older furniture found their place in this room. By older, I mean a decade old. At least. My mom bought the couch {and over-sized chair, not shown} as college graduation gifts and the black tables are from Cost Plus when we first moved to Vegas years ago. Old and worn they are…but they fill the space and the couch is actually quite comfortable. But what to do about the abscess over the couch? I originally envisioned some great piece of art; one that D and I found on our worldly travels that costs a near fortune. Ya, that’s not happening anytime soon, so I took to Plan B. After some research on good ol’ Pintrest, I decided to DIY three large fabric panels.

They’re custom, big and inexpensive to make, basically just consisting of constructing the frame then stapling your chosen fabric over it. Here is how I did it:

You’ll need stretcher bars. I had the nice guy at Home Depot cut them down to my desired measurements. For the three canvas frames, I needed 5 bars {which were $0.98 each}. For the construction, I started with using only wood glue to connect the wood bars. Even the Home Depot guy said that would be fine… but it wasn’t. Don’t bother with the wood glue! Daddy D came home, laughed at my glue fiasco, and nailed two medium sized nails into each corner of the frames instead. That was perfect {and I loved watching my handyman at work!}…

The fabric was the most expensive part of this project. Since it’s covering a large space, I wanted to love it. Loving anything comes at a cost. And at $40/yard, I love this fabric and its large scaled pattern. I needed two yards {probably three, in hindsight} and had a 40% off coupon. So this is where the majority of the cost came in.

I used a regular ol’ stapler to wrap the frames. Starting with the long sides, in the middle, and pulling tightly as I went along to make sure the corners were crisp…

See….super easy! I have left over stretch bars that are aching for my attention with some less expensive fabric. Maybe holiday fare? Or even solid fabric as a clean slate for an Alina masterpiece? One thing is certain, I won’t be purchasing expensive stretch canvas frames from specialty framing stores anymore. DIY canvas frames are so much easier!

Happy Monday!