From Window Frame to Picture Frame

Today I'm going to share with you a project that I did with some of our family pictures.

I've had these old window frames sitting around here for about a year. I had spotted them at our local thrift/architectural salvage store and had big plans for them, but I needed the perfect pictures for them :) So when I saw the proofs from our family photo shoot I knew exactly where I wanted some of the pictures to go.

First step was to clean up these babies and seal them. I like the shabby chicness of the roughed up/peeling white paint and wanted to leave them that way. Also, I knew I wanted to use a bunch of colour in the matting so a white frame worked for me :)

Next I decided which pictures I wanted to use and had them printed out in 5"x7" size (the window openings are 9.5"x11.5") 

As you can see I chose 1/2 going vertical and 1/2 going horizontal. (sorry for the really orangey brown background, my desk is the same colour wood as our log walls)

Next, I went through my scrapbook paper stash and selected some papers to mat the photos on. I chose one solid colour (the blue that the picture is sitting on) and four different patterned papers to coordinate with the solid.

oops! I guess I only took a picture of two different types of pattern for this part, but you can see the other two patterns I chose, further down :) I just love that paper with the birds and have been wanting to use it for soooo long!

So, then I decided to round the corners of the solid colour paper with my corner rounder. Next, I centered the photos on the solid 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and secured it with glue dots and centered both of those on the patterned paper and secured it as well.

Ah here's where you can see the other two papers :) I decided to jazz it up a little more and added some rub-on quotes, swirls, stars and words (whatever "spoke" to me :)

Next I had to secure everything to the window picture frame. I decided to use my trusty little glue gun for that part ( I was running out of glue dots!) So I decided where I wanted each picture to go and I carefully squeezed a little blob of glue on each corner of each paper.

And Voila!! Two nice big picture frames showing off 8 family pictures :)

As you can see, the vertical frame had a little handle in one corner so I decided to jazz it up with a little help from my ribbon stash. ( sorry the picture below is so blurry)

Overall I think to total cost of the project was about $15. The frames were 5 bucks each ( if I remember correctly) and the only other cost was enlarging and printing the photos as the rest of the stuff I had on hand. Not bad for two huge personalized frames that I absolutely love! The other bonus? Hubby and kids love them too!

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