Modern Wood and Acrylic Photo Stand

Evan and I both paint so our walls are covered in art. It’s not necessarily a bad thing - but it means we don’t have much wall space for photos. However, we have these dining room shelves with extra space, so we sprung for some nice cherry hardwood (#treatyoself) to build this photo stand.

To do this project you’ll need:

• Wood (the size and type is up to you)
• two 8x10 acrylic sheets (or whatever size works for you)
• A pocket hole jig
• Pocket hole screws
• Stainless steel standoffs
• Miter saw
• Sander or sandpaper
• Drill
• Screwdriver
• Some sort of finish (we use this oil)

Step 1: Cut to Length

This photo stand is made of a front (vertical) face and a bottom (horizontal) base that meet at a 15 degree angle. It looks kinda like an upside down 7. If you’re a beginner, I’d suggest doing a 90 degree angle with these two pieces, so that it looks like an upside down T (⊥).

It can be whatever size you want. Our vertical face is about 13”x10.5” and our horizontal base is 13” x 5”.

If you found a piece of wood that’s wide enough, you’d just need to cut 1 piece for the front and 1 piece for the bottom. We made all the cuts on our miter saw. We fell in love with a particular piece of cherry wood that wasn’t wide enough, so we joined 2 pieces together for the front piece.

Step 2: Cut Angles

To make the 15 degree angle, cut 1 side of the bottom piece at 15 degrees and BOTH sides of the top piece at 15 degrees (so that the top of the top piece is parallel to the ground, and the bottom side of the top piece lines up with your bottom piece.) Again, we used our miter saw for this.

Step 3: Drill Pocket Holes

We drilled pocket holes into the bottom of our base using a pocket hole jig. We did two, though looking back we kinda wish we had done a third for good measure. We won’t attach the bottom piece to the top piece yet, but it’s easier to go ahead and make the pocket holes now.

Step 4: Attach Metal Stand-offs

The stand-offs are made of 2 pieces. One will be attached directly to the wood, and the other will be attached to the front of the acrylic sheets.

To attach the first piece of the stand-off directly to the wood, we used our drill to make small pilot holes through both acrylic sheets and the wood at the same time. This ensures that everything lines up when we assemble it. After the pilot holes, we removed the acrylic sheets and screwed the bottom of the stand-offs to the wood.

Then we drilled larger holes through the acrylic only. Put a piece of scrap wood under your acrylic to prevent damaging your work table.

Step 5: Join the Wood

Joining the front and bottom pieces of wood was the only (somewhat) difficult part of this project. We built a custom jig to help us clamp the two pieces at this angle by cutting some scrap wood to fit on the outside and inside of the angle. If you do a 90 degree angle instead of a 15 degree angle, clamping will be easy. Screw through your pocket holes to attach the two pieces.

Step 6: Sand and Add Finish

After joining, we sanded our edges with a random orbit sander and gave the whole thing a quick once over. Note, the once over would be easier to do before adding the metal stand-offs.

We finished with a single coat of our favorite wood oil.

Step 7: Assemble

Layer the acrylic sheets and your photo over the part of the stand-offs attached to the wood, then screw on the top part of your stand-offs.

We like this type of photo display because you could display a single photo like we did here or a grid of smaller photos. Hope you like the tutorial and let us know if you have any questions!

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Comments

[NancyK63]

How does the photo stay in, since you have a space between the acrylic and the wood?

[evanandkatelyn]

It's sandwiched between two peices of acrylic :)

[laith mohamed]

Looks good looking

[evanandkatelyn]

haha thanks!

[hareeshgs]

Fantastic, like it.It would have been awesome if some light up arrangements using LEDs were also there.

[evanandkatelyn]

Ooh that sounds fun!

[BeckaSue]

Love your project - very nice! Great job on your video, too. You guys are funny. It's fun to see your enthusiasm.

[evanandkatelyn]

Appreciate it, they are so fun to make! Haha the best thing is that we cut most of the parts where we really loose it and start laughing. We actually included some of that in our latest tutorial: https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Botanical-Wall-Art/ at the very end (bloopers)

[evanandkatelyn]

Thanks so much!! :D love learning new things and sharing with people, so we're working on more now!

[TomMcIn]

I have hundreds of photos in boxes that I would like to see more often. Would like to have a stack of pictures in each display and change them when I want. This desk or table top display looks like a promising design starting point.

[evanandkatelyn]

Yeah, we actually had an idea like that for this. Basically you would glue some dowels onto the back frame in the shape of a short U that would hold a stack of photos :)

[douglasroyal]

That's a beautiful frame. Nice work.

[evanandkatelyn]

Thanks so much! :D