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September 6, 2011

MATTEr of Change

Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend! We had friends and family over for our first party/bbq and enjoyed every minute of it!
A long weekend for me also means that I can do a project or two while Scott is home and entertaining the girls.

One of the things I had been wanting to tackle was a large Pottery Barn frame we received as a wedding gift.



Now my 2006 self thought this looked great - blue marker handwriting, multiple photos from our big day surrounding the 8"x10" photo in the middle with some sea grass from our centerpieces and a few tiny starfish to even everything out...whoa. 

My 2011 self looks at this and cringes.  Why did I write on this? At the very least I could have gotten someone with decent handwriting to do it!  Anyway, the frame is beautiful and I love this wedding photo so I wanted to come up with some way of saving it from sitting in our basement indefinitely.

The biggest problem (literally) was the matte - it is just so big that I felt like it needed something to fill it out then and I still do now - just not so much.  So after much procrastinating deliberating I had an idea - stencils!

Lovely vintage brass stencils purchased on Etsy.

Originally I planned to adhere these weathered and worn beauties onto the matte.  But after a few configurations it just didn't look  balanced to me.  So I decided to try using them as stencils (genius) instead. 


A little metallic gold paint and a sponge brush.

I should mention that the stencils I bought were of the words and numbers significant to our big day.

08 18 2006 - the day we got married
HAPPY - our first dance song (a little known Bruce Springsteen gem)
LBI - Long Beach Island - wedding location


Not perfect but much better!

I'm planning to hang this in our dining room - but am a little commitment-phobe at the moment and not sure where exactly it will go.  So in the meantime, I took a few shots of it leaning against the wall.







Updating a blah matte with stenciled letters and/or numbers is a great way to modernize any frame you have.  This would look great in a child's room too with the alphabet stenciled in bright colors!





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2 comments:

Melody said...

That's so clever and lovely! I totally want to try this!

Sheryl Hastings said...

I love that. So pretty. Really shows off the photo with style and doesn't compete at all with it.

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