• Unusual mats for picture framesframe image by William Berry from Fotolia.com
  
  Picture mats can be as original as the art or photographs they frame. Baby photos play peek-a-boo in a custom cut-out mat. Holiday cards escape the recycle bin to underscore holiday memories. Teenagers can keep their favorite jeans---or at least parts of them. A vacation photo is fixed into its own navigation chart. Be creative to make special pictures even more special.
  
  

Blue Jeans Mat

• Teens and tweens will find good uses for mats made from old blue jeans. Cut out the back pocket, including the fabric it is sewn to, with pinking shears and glue it to the backing from an old photo frame. (The backing is the piece that has a fold-out stand and slides into a frame behind the picture.) A rectangle cut out of the pocket itself creates the slot for a photograph.The photo slips into the pocket and can be seen framed by the rectangular mat. The blue jeans mat can be pressed into a frame or will stand alone on a desk or dresser.
  
  

Baby Name Mat

• Use a pretty pastel photo frame to enclose a mat with cut-out letters that spell your baby's name. Put photographs of the baby at different ages in each of the letter openings, in chronological order. The baby's birth date can be written in beautiful script on the front of the mat.
  
  For a larger, shadowbox frame, create a mat with wooden block--shaped or baby shoe--shaped cut-outs on the top half and the cut-out letters of the child's name below. Fasten a couple of old wooden blocks or a pair of bronzed infant shoes in the frame before hanging.
  
  

Holiday Cards Mat

• Holiday cards get a new life as mats for holiday photographs. Cut the cards up and glue the best images to heavy cardboard. Cut the cardboard like a mat and place it around the photograph. Favorite cards and favorite photographs can evoke a favorite holiday when they are slipped into a frame for display.
  
  Similarly, beautiful art calendars on heavy, coated stock can last into a new year in a new incarnation as decorative mats. Glue the calendar pages to heavy cardboard and cut out like a mat. Colored calendar art can set off a black and white photo sharply. The black and white date pages make an interesting surround for color photos.
  
  

Map Mat

• A map from a vacation spot makes a perfect mat for your favorite vacation photograph. An old, dingy or shopworn mat---or one in a color that doesn't work for the picture---gets a swipe of glue stick and an application of roads and rivers, latitude and longitude, with any luck, a handscribbled note or two. This way, the map doesn't sit gathering dust in a drawer and the photograph is fixed in its moment, framed by a mat that conjures up the streets of Paris, the jungles of Panama or maybe downtown Peoria.