Photo corners are a classic and elegant way to frame your photos in your scrapbook or photo album. You can buy the little gummed-back cheap ones available at office supply stores, or you can go into a scrapbook store and buy expensive fancy ones. It seems that no matter what you buy, though, they never quite match what you need, or you didn’t get enough. The good news is that they are so easy to make yourself!

You can easily turn any paper or ribbon into a photo corner in less than a minute. Figure 1 shows two photos on large mats. The palm tree photo has a strip of paper next to it that matches and will make great photo corners. The dog photo has a piece of ribbon with paw prints on it. Let me show you exactly how to turn the paper or the ribbon into photo corners.

Start by trimming the strip down to about 1/2 inch wide (although you could use any width you like). Then take one end of the paper and fold it back, forming a right angle (see top of Fig 2). Then fold the other end down, lining it up with the first one, and pressing the seams down firmly (bottom of Fig 2).

Now trim off the long piece of the strip and repeat until you have one for each corner. Now just slide the the paper over the corner of the photo (Fig 3) and then tape it securely on the back (Fig 4).

That’s all there is to it! You’ve just created custom photo corners in hardly any time at all, and for mere pennies. See the completed palm tree photo in Figure 5. I finished the dog photo (Fig 6) in the same fashion, taking care to line up the paw prints on the ribbon so they were centered in each corner.

You can try this technique with any paper or ribbon. Use the scraps from a layout to finish off the pictures, or finally find a use for those tiny ribbon scraps you’ve been saving. The result is so cute, quick, easy, and best of all… cheap!