An Easy Playbill Gallery

Looking to display your Playbills? Here’s an easy Playbill gallery.

We’ve been fortunate enough to go to New York a couple of times. When there we always see a couple of musicals and plays. I love the Playbill or program that you get with it. The cover artwork is always so nice. The Playbill makes a great souvenir of the experience.

I’ve saved the Playbilsl that we got from all of the shows we’ve attended and I thought it would make a neat gallery. So I wanted to come up with an easy Playbill gallery.

The Challenge with the Playbills

The Playbills are an odd size. They measure 5 3/8 by 8 1/2 inches. Because of this, a standard frame does not work. A 5×7 is too small.

Now there are Playbill frames you can buy. They’ve been customized to fit this odd size. But they’re pretty pricey. So if you want to make a gallery wall with a bunch of them, it can get pretty expensive.

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An Easy Playbill Gallery

I wanted something simple, accessible and inexpensive. I didn’t have that many Playbills – only 5 to start with. I hope to go back to New York again in the future and see other shows. I wanted an easy Playbill gallery that would allow me to add to it in the future.

As mentioned, no photo frame fits it perfectly. The closest you will get is an 8×10. So I decided to work with that. The side margins will be wider than the top and bottom margins. If you can live with that, then an 8×10 frame is your best bet.

I can live with that and so I just needed a basic, black frame that was economical. I also wanted something, that when I add to the gallery, was readily available. So something like a dollar store frame would not work as I have no idea if the same frame would be available in years to come. I want all the frames to match.

So I decided to go to my favourite tried and true store – IKEA. One of the standard black frames that IKEA carries is the RIBBA frame. It comes in several sizes.

The IKEA Ribba frame is reasonably priced. It does not have a glass front – that accounts for the lower price point. But it’s been around forever and it comes in 7 sizes!

Although it doesn’t pertain to this particular project, I do like it when gallery walls have something consistent – like the same colour frame. The sizes of all the photos or artwork may be different, but having something like everything in a black frame makes it more cohesive. They don’t even necessarily have to be all the same frame – but having the consistency of black frames ties everything together.

Now the IKEA Ribba frame comes with a mat, but obviously, it’s not going to fit the Playbill since they are an odd size. So I just mounted the Playbill on top of the mat. To keep it from shifting, I simply used green painter’s tape to secure it and keep it in place.