Making a Picture Frame Collage

As I've said in previous posts...I LOVE PICTURES!  My house is covered in pictures of my family but sometimes you can end up with too many frames lying around so I had to move my picture collection to the walls.  Hanging one frame here and there just wasn't going to work so I decided a picture frame collage was the perfect solution.  

I found inspiration in several places.  Here, at the fabuloushomeblog.com, there were a lot of ideas but in my opinion, they were a little too uniform.  Don't get me wrong, they all look nice, but I was looking for something a little more creative and different.  These were way too organized for how I'm rollin' these days, I guess you could call my life organized chaos :-)

Anyway, I really liked the way this pinner used different types of frames, not all the same and not all hung in perfect lines.  The shutters were a little too country for the style of my home, so I did my own variation.  

I bought frames from Hobby Lobby, Michael's and JoAnn Fabrics.  I pretty much went where ever they were selling for 50% off or where I had a coupon.  Here's my picture frame collage that now hangs in my living room.  

I spent less than $30 in new picture frames including the large one in the middle.  I had three frames to start.  I really like the way it came out, so the idea of a picture frame collage is a PIN for me! 

But as our family is growing, I'm really debating on whether or not I should add more frames around the large frame in the center.  There is enough space that I could fit some 4 x 6 frames. What do you think?  Should I add more to my picture frame collage or leave it as is?  

DIY Wall Art - What a Difference A Day Makes

Everything I do from Pinterest is mainly for my family in some way shape or form even though they may not realize it when it comes in the form of a DIY wall art project :-).  When I saw this project I thought it was a really cute way to showcase the history and making of our family as it is today.  I found the original idea on Sweet Little Loving's.

Now, I am by no means a graphic designer but I used Microsoft Publisher to lay my picture out.  I could be wrong but I think creating this in a simple Word document might be difficult as you really need to make sure that things line up properly.  Any way, in Publisher I turned on the grid and ruler function.  I selected three fonts, Castellar for the numbers, Clipper Script for the names and Modern No. 20 for the sentence at the bottom.  

Although I really like the lines she used on each side of her names, I couldn't get mine to look as nice so I left them off.  I also couldn't turn my writing the way she did with the word "day" in the last sentence so I just made it blue to highlight it a bit.  From there, I put a border around the entire thing and printed it on resume paper.  

Here's my end result!

 If I had to do over again, I'd twist the leg of one of my graphic designer friends and have them help me lay this out so I could have the lines the way the original poster did next to everyone's names.  I'd also add the detail to the word "day" as the original poster did.  But for just having basic graphic design skills and it just being a quick DIY project, I'm ok with the way it came out.

As for supplies, I had the resume paper and the frame was on sale at Michael's for $6.  So, I did this whole project for $6, it was relatively easy and not too time consuming.  Best of all, it gave me another piece of inexpensive DIY wall art to add to my living room so this project gets a PIN.  

And now that you all know my birthday, I'll be expecting gifts :-)  Just kidding...up next, Spring cleaning is just around the corner so I'm going to tackle my Microfiber couch and try to get the stains out with DIY cleaning post I found on Pinterest. Organizing with Pinterest ideas is upcoming too so stay tuned!  If you haven't already please subscribe to Pin or Pass so you don't miss any of my posts!