What can take your posters from dorm room to distinctive? A very simple dollar store crafty technique for mounting posters or photos on foam core board. Foam core makes it easier to display posters, so you can use this technique for presentations, school projects, gallery displays, or in your home decor. If you are an aspiring photographer, nothing makes your photos look better than when they are mounted on foam core.

Project Estimate:

A poster or photo print, on hand

A sheet of foam core board (black or white), $1

Glue stick, on hand or $1

Box cutter or craft knife, on hand or $1

Total: $1 and up

If you are using this technique for a presentation, pick up some easels in the photo frame section of the dollar store — you can prop your mounted posters on them for a quick, easy, and inexpensive display. You can trim the mounted photo down to any size. Here’s an example of when I used mounted photos in a display about craft tutorials available on our site. I got everything on the table at the dollar store and had the photos printed at Costco.

The 16×20″ photo in this project cost just about $6 to print at Costco, and I just uploaded and ordered it from home and then picked it up about an hour later at my local warehouse. You can mount just about any photo, poster, drawing, etc.

Gather your supplies and clear a work surface. What, you already have clear work surfaces in your house? In that case, skip this step.

1. Flip the photo over and glue stick the heck out of it. You will probably use up at least half of the glue stick on a 16×20 photo.

2. Turn the gluey poster over and line it up along the corner and edge of the foam core board. If you need to, add additional glue along the corners or edges. Burnish the poster onto the board (which is a fancy way to say rub it down onto the board. I use my longsleeved arm for this.) If the photo isn’t the same size as the board, don’t worry. You will trim down the board in the next step.

3. Carefully trim along the edge of the poster with a box cutter or craft knife. You do NOT want the razor blade to go all the way down through the board. Just score the paper along the edge of the poster.

4. After one side is scored, fold the board along the scored section.

5. Turn the poster over, and cut through the paper on the score line. You don’t have to press the razor blade down – you just need to cut the paper.

6. Clean up any rough edges.

There you go – an easy and cheap way to mount posters with professional-looking results.