Decorating My House With My Scrapbook Pages

Hello there craftnistas. 

It's all about the decorating today.  We moved into a new house (is it still new if we have been here for 4 years? haha) and we are still decorating.  What to put on the walls and in the rooms has seriously become a bomb of indecision for us.  We have plenty of stuff, I make plenty of stuff and we certainly buy plenty of stuff but we stall, big time, when it comes time to actually decorate with it all.  I know that we are not the only non-decorater types that have this problem.

So in order to stop the madness, I decide to start decorating with our family photos.  It's not a huge decorating project but it is a very personal one for us.  A baby step to be sure, but a step nonetheless.  Husband is 100% on board and thought it was a great idea to start with the 100's of family photos that we have and to put said photos in the rooms that are most used by the people in them.  For instance, one of my sisters always stays in the same room so we are going to put her pictures in there and in the family spaces like the family room and sunroom.  The children have a dedicated space so all of the kids photos will go in that room.  I love the idea of them being able to find their pictures on my walls when they come to visit.  Hopefully, they will feel even more at home.  Here are just a couple that made the cut.....

 Being the crafty girl that I am, I had to celebrate by making something.  I have a million of these cheap brass frames and I wanted to create something special with one of them.  I didn't want to do something for the wall but for the side table in my sunroom.  This is the type of frame that I used.  They can be just about anywhere and are very inexpensive......

The first thing that I did was cover it with a light coat of gesso.  I don't mind that the brass shows through or that the paint may wear off over time.  I really like that vintage, distress type look.

I added some plain old acrylic paints, inks and sprays to give it some personality. 

Still looks like a cheap brass picture frame with paint on it but the magic will happen soon.  As the frame dried, I went to work on the layout. 

Since it is of me & my sisters, I used lots of pastel colors and flowers.  This is a permanent solution folks.  The layout is very dimensional so 1, I have to build it in the frame and 2, I have to remove the glass.  To begin, I simply sketched out my basic design and grabbed a whole bunch of stuff from my stash.

I placed the base layers (all the flat stuff like pp and photo mats) directly on the easel back of the frame. 

Next, I placed the backing back in the frame and than add all of my fluffy stuff, inks, title and photo. 

 

 

This is my completed piece ready for the photo of me & my sisters.  I plan to put it on the side table in my sunroom.  I love it and my sisters are going to love it too.  In fact, I will probably have to make one for each of them.  

Thanks for stopping by!