Tuesday, January 5, 2010

A New Arrangement

We have a couple of ledges in our family room that we got a long time ago for displaying older, significant family photos. I’ve enjoyed having them up, but I’ve wanted to tweak them a bit. For the longest time.

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I think what really prompted me to finally do something about it was this FAMILY “plaque” my dad made and gave us for Christmas:

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I was searching for a place for it and finally could see it working with these photos. But in order to still see the photos, I would have to go forward with my long overdue plan. To mat them. (Therefore the plaque would not cover as much of the photos and you could see FAMILY better with the white mat background.) And with that, I wanted all coordinating frames.

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Plus, I had also recently scanned a wedding photo of Jason’s parents finally to match a little better with the theme (older photos – we had a more recent pic of them up). I also photoshopped out the original background and put in a dark tan one (along with some clearing and brightening up), again to add a little more consistency amongst the photos. Took some time to figure out, but not too bad, huh?

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For Jason’s grandparents and aunt (who was like a grandma to him), I wanted to convert them all to black and white, like my grandparents’ photos. So I scanned those as well, resized them and made them grayscale. A little photoshop again in some places to take out noise.

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I did quite a bit of searching to find the two larger frames (Kohl’s). We had the 3 opening 4x6 frames already. Now I’d like to get a 2 opening mat for the 2 5x7 photos. I can find one at Pottery Barn with a similar frame style. In fact we already own one. The problem is that the mat is cream and would not match the others. I have looked around for just a WHITE mat with 2 5x7 openings and cannot find one, so I’m going to find out if a craft store can custom cut one for me for not too much moola. And it would then fit into an 11x14 frame. For now, this is how it is. I found the little ceramic birdie on clearance at Joann’s. I thought I wanted to put it in our dining room hutch, but she looks really great here, I think!

I've linked this post over at Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After party!


4 ripples:

Sarah said...

If you have Hobby Lobby you can buy HUGE sheets of matboard for around $7 (on sale or with coupon I think), then cut one yourself. Then the leftovers are useful for all kinds of things, from blogging backgrounds to craft projects.

Sarah and Jack said...

Ugh, I find it annoying that google always has me signed into the wrong account. That was me.

Kristi said...

Oh Sarah, I thought about that, but I'm sure I'd mess it up. The lines would not be straight, or would be jagged or something. Do you know of a good tutorial. I looked it up, but you have to have some specialized tools. All I have is an exacto knife.

Anonymous said...

Isn't it great to get some of the "long overdue" projects out of the way? I have a similar one envisioned for our living room. We still need to paint, but then I have a vinyl decal waiting to go up, with a great quote. (so great that I cannot remember it right now. doh!)

hope you're feeling better soon!

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