Keeping the Memories

I’m back from vacation and a little bit jet-lagged. I have a few bigger projects looming over me and am trying to get back into the groove. That is why when my sixteen year old daughter asked me to help her with a project, I was all over it!

My daughter has a pretty amazing eye for photography. Her request for Christmas last year was a 35 mm camera. She’s gathering quite a cool portfolio! Last weekend, she decided to buy herself a Polaroid instant camera to have pictures with a more “nostalgic” feel. She wanted a fun way to display them and had seen a few ideas on Pinterest of a frame that she could hang on her wall. For my 25th high school reunion, I had done a project slightly similar so I knew exactly what to do and where to get my supplies.

Another trip to Goodwill! One of these days, the folks at our local Goodwill will know my mom and I by name. Above all of the clothing racks is a shelf that is lined with framed paintings along each side of the store. I knew about what size I was looking for and that I wanted a bit of design to it. They’re usually between $3-5 a painting. Not too shabby for a huge frame! This particular one was $4.99. A lot of times, there will be paper coating the back, but this one was already removed. All that I needed to do was to remove the staples on the back. Out with the staples, out with the painting, and out with the glass.

Once the frame was free, it was time to start painting. Jordan decided that she wanted it painted blue to match the royal and light yellow in her bedroom. Guess what that means? I get to use my Dixie Belle Yankee Blue again! Once again, I absolutely love how quickly the transformation starts when you add a bit of paint. It needed two coats to insure full coverage. With such a small area, this took no time at all.

The frame is painted and now it’s time to add the jute. Jute is a rough twine and is what will be used to hang the pictures on. It adds kind of a rustic effect to the frame. I was able to buy a large spool of jute in the craft section at Walmart for $1.97. I needed something to attach it to, though. I was trying to decide whether to use hot glue or small command strips and decided that the latter would probably hold better. There was quite a bit of the backing paper still on the back of the frame so we had to get as much off as we could to give the command strips something to hold onto. Now this next part was interesting. We knew that Jordan wanted 4 strands across the frame. Math is definitely not my forte, so listening to me try and make calculations for how to distance them was a bit humorous! I’m crafty not mathy. Ha! Anyhoo, we decided what distance we wanted each pic from each other and went with that. If you decide to create this project on your own from my tutorial, please know that the rest of my instructions are well thought out!

The command strips are perfect for this! If there is enough of a lip on the inner section of the frame, that would be the best place to put the strips. I didn’t have enough space so I added them to the back of the frame. I knew that they would stick off of the back a bit, but the hangers that were already on the frame (which I moved to change the frame to landscape from portrait) stand off the back a bit, too so I wasn’t too concerned. I placed the strips so that the closed portion of the hook was on the inside. This is great for tying the jute on so that you can pull it tight without the twine pulling off. We did a separate strand for each row.

Just a few hours and our project was done! Most of the delay was literally waiting for the paint to dry. Our finished project turned out super cute and was exactly what Jordan wanted! We found some tiny clothes pins for her to use to hang her pictures on and mounted it above her bed. Such an easy and fast project! We were able to finish it in one day for under $20 and still have quite a few supplies leftover!