9 Frames Finished!

Remember way back when we were trying to decide what to do with our tall wall and decided to go with the 9 frames? Well initially the frames were too large so we decided to do a little homework to get it right the next time.

So we taped, measured and leveled to make sure our spacing would work.

It was important that the frames were not too close to the television so not to cause a distraction.  We then purchased a few of these frames as they were on sale at Joann's Fabrics:

Here is a comparison of the first frame that we purchased versus the second.

 

Though both frame sizes are 16x20 the one on the right has a much larger outer frame which is why it was enormous. So even though we now had the correct size frames unfortunately the matting was cream instead of white. As we priced matting we knew that we would have to improvise because we were not about to pay $8.00 plus per piece for matting! That is paper extortion and we are ballers on a budget! So we eventually hung up all nine frames:

and the little stock image girl stared at us daily for the longest time because we had no idea what we were going to put in the frames.  We thought, maybe some type of fabric but the idea of trying to roam through Joann's to find 9 frames worth of different patterns that worked together seemed impossible. Then we thought that we'd print out random shapes but again finding and choosing the right shapes and colors proved to be yet another challenge. Finally after many Google searches we finally found images that we were able to put together quite nicely! Once we sized them appropriately we took them to Kinkos and had them printed out on 11x17. While there we cut them down to the 11x14 size that we needed and we were in business! What do you think?

Getting the images into the frames perfectly was a bit of a challenge. First there was the matting issue. What we decided to do was utilize the little stock girl! I simply turned her photo around which gave us a solid white background. I then put the printout on the center of the matting to measure the spacing and marked the 4 corners with a pen. After which I sprayed the back of the printout with spray adhesive and very carefully laid the printout on the white paper within the 4 marks. I did this for all nine printouts and surprisingly they all ended up being rather even. I'd show photos of this process but it was late, Chris was asleep and I wanted to get them finished! After each printout was affixed to the white paper, I put the cream matting on back to fill space and viola I have my "white matting". What do you think?

We love it! Now we just have to figure out the tiny television and the space on the left and right of the wall.

We have a lot of wall but at least we have a start!

Tatum