DIY Projects

On top of the many ideas and half-finished DIY projects that I have I actually managed to finally finish two of them(goooooo me!!!).

The first one that I want to share is a shadow box that we made for our wedding cake toppers. We did something a little unconventional for our cake topper and it was probably one of my favorite things from the wedding. I found a vintage hallmark ornament of Barbie (with brown hair, of course) and Ken and turned it into our topper! It came out so good! After the wedding we didn’t really keep a whole lot of stuff in fear that it would take over our house but I just could not let these toppers go. I had the idea to put them in a shadow box and glue their feet down so they stood up on their own, but I could not find a box that was deep enough to fit Barbie’s dress (we all know…the bigger the dress the better, lol). One day I was in Michael’s with the hubby and out of nowhere he had a flash of brilliance (please don’t tell him, his head is big enough) and suggested that I buy whatever box I wanted and instead of using the backing that it came with to buy a piece of scrapbook paper and hot glue it to the back (he really has been around me too long). I could not have gotten the stuff and made it home quicker, I was so excited! I chose just a small shadow box frame and a pink and damask patterned paper, once I had glued Barbie and Ken in with the glue gun and waited a few minutes for them to set I cut out the paper using the original backing as a template, hot glued around the edges of the back of the box and attached the paper! It was so easy, and I think it looks so good!

The second project that I want to share is a DIY picture frame that I just did. I actually got this idea while visiting The Community Forklift here in Maryland (http://www.communityforklift.com/). While perusing around I saw their old window frames and I decided to get a couple and bring them home to try and turn them into picture frames. I purchased two HUGE windows (one is the size of a small door) that had grid patterns that I knew would work for pictures. The cost of the two windows was less than $20.00!!!!!!

From there I went to Joannes and picked out fabric (I found the most AMAZING tan half zebra half cheetah print) and photo dots. My idea was to use the dots to secure the photos to the glass so that there would be some dimension to it and the photos would be raised back off the glass some and the fabric stapled on as a backing. I also used ivory craft paint,  a razor blade, and computer keyboard spray (I know that stuff has an actual name, but I have no clue what it is so just go with it) but I already had those at home with my craft supplies.

Once I got home I cleaned all of the glass on the door sized window with Windex and  used the razor blade to remove any paint that was already on the glass. Once all of the old paint was off  I used my computer keyboard spray to get all of the paint pieces off the glass and out of all the corners in the grids, then I Windexed it again. Then I layed out all of the photos  I wanted to use and put them in the right grids, one by one I put a photo dot in the corner of each photo and put it on the glass, trying to make sure by eye that they were all lining up evenly! The last thing to do was to use our staple gun to attach the fabric to the back, then cut off the excess fabric.

It came out looking great! We still need to attach hardware to the frame of the window so that we can hang it on the wall but I keep running into the problem of my pictures sliding down and falling!!!!! I guess the photo dots just are not stong enough to hold to the glass. Taking the fabric off to fix them is easy enough with a staple remover but I need to figure out a way to get them to stay before I hang it up or start on the other window that I have…anyone got any ideas??? I will try anything!

If I can get the pictures to stay I think I might go back and get more windows and make these as Christmas presents. I think people would really like them!