Repurposed Frame

Happy Sunday!

MAN have I been productive the last few days!  When school ended I decided it was time to "unplug", spend less time on electronics, more time with the kids and getting around to those "one-day" items on the never ending to-do list.  I've been PRETTY good insofar as I've stayed away from Facebook for the most part and that alone has freed up HOURS of time every day.  Instead of getting lost surfing the net every morning over coffee I seem to have hit all my preferred blogs etc within about 6 minutes!  I have spent my extra time writing out recipes (yes, I'm totally addicted to Pinterest and have most of my favourite recipes saved there but I want a hand-written version to refer to and/or to pass on to the kids one day!), purging closets, drawers, printing out photographs, updating the kids' diaries and so on.  heck, this morning alone I went through EIGHT magazines!  I have some dating back to 2011! *lol*

Yesterday, amongst other things, Rebecca and I got some crafting time in.  Woo hoo!

About a month ago she asked me if she could get a cork board for her room so she could pin up pictures of her and her friends.  What???  A CORK BOARD??!!!  No child of MINE is going to have a plain old CORK BOARD in her room!  Seriously - I thought I was going to faint!  No, no NO!  I had visions of FINALLY having a reason to grab a canvas, some batting, some cute fabric and ribbon and making a fabric covered board with ribbon criss-crossing it - you know the ones I mean … something like this …

Then I thought NOOOOOOOO!  I wanna make one of those repurposed picture frame boards that are all the rage - something like this …

 … or this ...

So!  Last week we headed over to Value Village to see if we could find a frame that would work.  Score!  We found this monster and it was PERFECT!

** As an aside, I had to laugh when Craig came home, saw this *lovely* picture in the garage.  He very delicately asked "what's with the picture?"  Of course I HAD to wind him up and tell him how much I loved it and that it was going to be the focal piece in our living room.  Hee hee.  Not saying it's TOTALLY hideous, just not our cup of tea at ALL!

Aside from the great size of the frame (it's about 30" x 36"!) it was a great price ($22.50) but best of all was the texture on the frame.  It is ridged - looks like waves …

When I saw it I immediately envisioned it painted white, which the ridges painted black.  Rebecca has some zebra print in her room and this would look great!

This picture doesn't look very different to the original, gold colour but it is.  It's a great white-wash white with black highlights.  For paint I just grabbed what I had - an Ikea white paint and some black from Michaels.  We used sponge brushes to paint it.

 The whole project only took a few hours.  Once the paint was dry (which was fairly immediately) I headed down to my ribbon stash and we agreed on some retired white sweater trim.  I grabbed Craig's staple gun, stapled it across the frame and Wa-LOW!  Done!

 Craig hung it up and I gave Rebecca a roll of some metal clothespins I had picked up at Michael's last week on Clearance.  I think the roll (probably 30 pins?) was $3.99.

I believe they are "Alphabet Soup" brand - if you're in Edmonton, check the clearance aisles - these were about 5 aisles away from the tills, with all the monogram/alphabet stuff that is was 70% off.

I have sent off a bunch of pictures to be developed so Rebecca can decorate the board to her heart's content.  If I have my way I'll get her to decorate the pictures with journalling cards, punched out embellishments and framelit phrases …. but it's not my room so we'll see *lol*

That's it for now - the kids are both out for sleepovers so it's Date Night.  Craig is making dinner then we'll watch a movie.  Fingers crossed I can stay awake past 8:30 pm!  hee hee

Whatever you get up to tonight I hope you have a stampy evening … and week!  Pop in again soon :)


Tam