Love Photo Collection

So, I had one of my 'bright ideas'...
When looking through engagement pictures, it occurred to me that some clever cropping could bring out the word 'love' for a lovely gift. Once the photos had been digitally cropped and printed at Walgreens (4x6s, if you must know), I set out on the difficult task of finding a reasonably priced frame to meet my needs. Unfortunately, 4 opening frames are not common with matting, so I settled on this lovely 10"x20" frame made from renewable wood that was on sale at Kohls and went to work modifying it to suit the project.

I cut border pieces from a dark green cardstock, using a rotary cutter to make quick cuts and a quilting ruler to help with nice 45 degree angles.
I then cut ivory cardstock larger than 4x6 with the rotary cutter, then used an X-acto knife and ruler to cut out an opening just under 4x6.
Due to the removal of the original matting, the cardstock + photo height came up short, so I cut a 10x20 piece of cardboard (recycled the box from our Wii balance board) to use as a foundation for the composition while adding thickness. I drew on a grid for alignment purposes and began placing pictures using double-sided photo tape.

Then I placed the ivory border pieces, followed by the green frame pieces.
Finally I added labels (which helped cover the seam of the border at the halfway point).
Ta-Da! Completed project in frame.

Camera = found!

One of my problems is finding blogs that put crazy (but fun & helpful!) ideas in my head...

One such blog is Knock-Off Wood, which I stumbled across a few months ago. We have since done a couple projects from Ana's blog (I'm working my way up to a toddler bed, which we need since Silly Monster is 2.5 years old and still in his crib). Below are a couple of my adventures, with corresponding links to Ana's blog/plans.

Clip Art Rails:
Seemed pretty simple as a beginner project - dismantle and paint some wooden clothespins, reassemble, then attach to a 1x2 strip that I had sanded and 'painted' (I used a Minwax PolyShades, which did stain and polyurethane in one step)

The problem that I had was attaching the clothespins to the wood strip....
first I tried wood glue, but the weight of the clothespins as I wanted them positioned did not allow them to stay put long enough for the glue to set;
then I tried hot glue, which set nicely, but when we nailed the strip to the wall, the vibrations caused most of the clothespins to fall off, leaving me with a clipless clip rail, otherwise known as a silly looking rail;
finally we settled on using a quick-setting Loctite Gel to re-attach the clothespins, and so far it's held up pretty good.

End table:
Our first furniture project, I think it turned out pretty good... we did have a minor issue with the spacers for the side rails splitting because DH was using nails that were too thick. While we were assembling it, Silly Monster decided that it made good 'garage' for his truck

Here again, I finished the table with the Minwax one-step Polyshades. Conveniently, it's just the right height for the garbage can.