How To Make A Magazine Monogram
Every time we post a photo that includes the frame collage above our living room’s console table like this…
…or this…
…. or this…
…. we get a slew of emails asking where we bought or how we made the big P print that’s front and center. Well, it’s actually just the first letter of an article in a magazine that we cut out in a neat little 1 x 2 inch rectangle and had blown up around 300% at Kinko’s. Here’s an example of the portion of the magazine you’d clip out and blow up (see that little box around the big first letter?):
Making it huge and putting it behind glass instantly created a customized monogram with very little work on our part, and we love how it came out! Just flip through magazines until you find your initial and head over to Kinko’s. A few dollars later it should be ready to frame (they look especially great with giant mats and pretty hefty frames to dress them up).
So you too can master the P (get it? Master P? no?) or any other letter that you’d like…
Psst- Looking for more easy DIY art ideas? Check out the bevy of links on our How To page in the “Artsy Ideas” category. And if you’re searching for framing arrangement ideas, this little video tutorial should have you covered.
Scanned magazine image (without the box that we added) found here.
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Comments
Sherry,
I love this idea! I was just wondering what kind of paper you printed on. And did they have it a Kinko’s or did you have to bring it in with you?
We just used the stock paper at Kinkos that they already had loaded in their printer. Easy as pie. And a large frame with a substantial mat really dresses it up (and makes it look beefy and high-quality). A few years later ours still looks great. You could also bring heavier weight paper if you’d like a more hefty end result. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
hey J & S,
I tried the method of cutting out an image and then blowing it up, but the kinko’s I went to didn’t blow up the image very well. Granted, I did print out the letter instead of cutting it from a magazine, so that might be why the image was a little pixilated, but do you have any suggestions for other options?
Hmm, maybe you could try finding it in a magazine instead of printing since printed letters can be harder to blow up super cleanly? You also could try printing the letter as large as possible at home before blowing it up (ex: if you print it close to 8 x 10 at home and blow it up 80% it’ll look clearer than printing it smaller and blowing it up 300%). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
They’re just words from a real article in the fashion magazine that I snipped it from (Vogue). You can see the top of Oscar De La Renta’s name at the bottom. Funny right? The main thing was the big P for our last name: Petersik. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Hi John and Sherry, I have been searching EVERYWHERE (even resorting to google images) for a Q for our monogram print for a few months now. As you can imagine, not many stories have an opening line that starts with a Q. Do you have any suggestions of where to look, or key words I might use? I wish I had seen when you guys were selling these in your shop!
Oh no that’s tough! Maybe you can make a fake one yourself in Photoshop or Word (just mimic the ones we show above and cut off sentences for the same look). We know of a few readers who made their own that way (without having to flip through magazines or blow things up at Kinkos) so it’s definitely doable! Good luck.
xo,
s
Love it! Thanks for sharing the link and the idea!
xo,
s