Framed!

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When Lila was born, someone gifted us with a collage photo frame, similar to this one.

Photo Courtesy of Amazon

I don't have a before shot of our frame. Whoops! Ours actually says "Bundle of Joy" on the side. It's very, very sweet. However, and this is my problem with all collage picture frames, I never have pictures that fit into the weird sized spaces. My good intention was to print off some pictures in these odd sizes, but it never happened. Honestly, after Lila died, I couldn't handle a lot of pictures around me. My BFF framed one snapshot for us and we kept that in the living room, but that was really it.

Finally I started framing and placing around some other Lila shots and I remembered this frame. I pulled it out of our "things we haven't found a home for even though we've lived here two years" box. Same problem, though. So what to do with a collage frame?

I realized maybe I could remove the wood strips that divided the collage frame. I took the frame apart, and voila! The framing was actually just really thin strips of wood (maybe balsa wood?) connected to the frame with heavy duty staples. Using a flathead screwdriver I pried the staples up. Then I was left with this!

It was still a non-standard frame size. I pondered having one picture made in this size, but after looking at it closely I realized it was the perfect size for 4x6s!  I just needed something to go behind the pictures. I dug through my scrapbag and came up with  a small piece of natural linen.

Success! (You'll note these pictures are heavily pixelated. This is because I'm breastfeeding in them. And I fully support breastfeeding and certainly fed Lila any and everywhere. However, I figured no one wanted to look at my breasts while they are having lunch!) Walgreens has had a couple of free 8x10 photo events (whenever I see a code, I always post it on Facebook and Twitter!) so I've scored...

Four nice 8x10s of Lila. I have a couple of dollar store frames...

 but need two more. I hope to find a couple of non-matchy frames at the thrift store, but I've struck out the last few times I checked. All the frames (the birch tones of the Bundle of Joy frame never really worked for me) have a date with spray paint this weekend, and hopefully I'll have a little frame cluster hung up by Monday!

This is the de-collage ready picture frame as it hung in our bedroom! Sadly, it was the only thing hanging in our bedroom (our bedroom is so tragic, even though we have a couple of awesome pieces of furniture in it. I'll post embarrassing pictures soon).

Total cost of project: $0. That's the way I like it!