Tag: frames

Craft Projects, Paint, Quick and Easy Crafts

Painted Frame Mats

Jessica Smith

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

I have been trying for about a year now to accessorize our house with adorable and mushy pictures of us, cutesy pictures of our pup, and wonderful photos of our families. Last night, in between cleaning out a hall closet and playing with my pup, I attempted this feat again. I broke out my stash of picture frames and rearranged a few shelves in our living room. I set my sights on this trio of white frames — I love the white frame with the patterned, yellow mat that I bought from Target a bajillion years ago. The other two frames are just… meh. Boringggggg.

I picked them up from the thrift store last year and never did anything super exciting with them. Last night I changed that.

I pooped the mats out and dashed off to my craft room to unearth some paint!

One mat got a green polka dot treatment using the end of a pen.

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

The other got a blue chevron stripe. I did both by hand and just eye-balled in. After all, the other side is free for painting if I screwed it up!

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

Once my mats were dry, I popped them back into the frames and set them on a shelf in our living room. Lord knows this won’t be their last home, but for now they are quite the colorful and cheery trio.

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

Cute, huh? Now I need some purple and orange and I’ll have a whole rainbow of frames.

{A Smith of All Trades} Painted Frame Mats

Home Improvement, Life

Bedroom loveliness

Jessica Smith

I’ve been a busy crafter this weekend! Check out the pretty upgrades to our master bedroom:

I got this new duvet cover and throw pillow at le target. I love it — it’s understated pattern works really well against the dark grayish-blue walls of our bedroom. Plus, the gray matches the silver accents around the room.

We also hung up a gallery wall in our bedroom. It wasn’t what I originally planned for two reasons: One, the hubby hated the big silver picture frame with letters in it (he’s so clueless ;p), and two, the gallery wall I originally laid on was wayyyyyy too big for the wall. Oh well!

Also, none of the pictures in the frames are staying as is (do you see the sideways Brian on the far left?), but it’s nice to finally have something up on our huge empty wall. Notice the big, silver mirror — doesn’t it look great?!

Check back tomorrow for fun crafts. Like I said, I was busy all weekend!

Craft Projects

Greeting Card Art

Jessica Smith

My aunt gives the best cards in the world. Seriously. They are fantastically beautiful and are one of the best parts of my birthday each year. I don’t know where she finds them, but boy do her cards have Hallmark beat.

I’ve saved several of the cards she’s given me over the years so I could frame them or something. I finally figured out how to display them!

Check out these horrendous plaques/frames. These used to hang in my dad’s basement displaying team photos from when he was my soccer coach (So cute!). I’ve since taken the photos out because I couldn’t stand to hang them in such an ugly way.

I didn’t want to throw these out, because, like so many other things, I knew I could do something with them. They are really simple, actually. Each frame is made of a piece of wood and a piece of plexiglass. The fasteners up top are pretty much thumb tacks or fancy nails.

After sorting through all of my frames trying to figure out if any would work to display my cards, I stumbled upon these frames. They were tucked at the bottom of a bin, just begging to be used. So I pulled them out and removed the tacks so I could get to work.

I knew I wanted these for my master bathroom, so I pulled out some dark blue paint to spruce these babies up.

After two coats of paint, I started to reassemble the frames.

I foolishly forgot to look at the back of the frame to make sure I was doing this the right way and I ended up putting two of them together upside down. This typically wouldn’t be a huge deal, but since I was impatient and put them together while the paint was the slightest bit tacky, I ended up tearing the cards a little. Thankfully, I didn’t cut the cards up, so only the back of the card was ripped, not the front covers. Phew!

After I had everything lined up, I hammered the nails/tacks back into the frame and hung them up in my bathroom.

They fill in the space right next to our shower perfectly. I am a little worried about how they will do with the moisture in the bathroom because they are pretty much slabs of wood. We’ll see how it goes. It sure looks nice!

I can’t wait for my aunt to see this! She’s gonna get such a kick out of it.

Aren’t these cards gorgeous? Totally frame worthy.

They made such a nice trio!

Thanks for stopping by! And happy Father’s Day!