Picture Perfect

If you are anything like me, you want lots of pictures of your family (especially children) around your home. But maybe you don't have a lot of space for frames or you don't want your refrigerator plastered with photos. Or maybe you just want a little more variety than just a million frames all over your walls and shelves.

I have a big problem with photos. I take so many of them, and I have so many favorites that I want to display. So, I've been looking for creative ways to display my kids' photos. Here are two ways I have "spiced" things up around here:

This is a French bulletin board I made. Please ignore the uneven spacing of the ribbon--I BARELY had enough ribbon, so I had to arrange things in a way that made my ribbon work. I'm sure you've seen these bulletin boards all over the place, but they're really pretty simple to make.

To make mine, I just used a staple gun to tack down some leftover quilt batting and fabric that I had in stock at home. And then I tacked down some ribbon with little silver tacks that I found in my husbands' photo hanging kit. Really very easy...took me less than an hour. And now I have a great place in my kitchen to see all the cute photos of my kids.

This next craft is what I made for my husband for Father's Day this year. Curtis, if you're reading this, please don't read any further. (Or at least act surprised when the kids give you the gifts, since you did cut the wood for me, afterall....) Using a leftover 2 x 4, I cut the wood into small pieces. I have 4 kids, ranging from age 2 to age 7, so I made each of them different heights based on their corresponding age. I then used my digital scrapbooking software to print off pictures and designs that I the decoupaged to the sanded wood. To give it an aged feel, I inked the edged with brown stamping ink before coating the paper with mod podge.

(Tip: if you have an ink jet printer like me, and you don't want the ink to run when you put mod podge on it, just give it a good spray with clear acrylic spray paint before you decoupage. It seals the inks in.)

(a good look at the edges)

(the back of the blocks. You gotta love the notes that my kids wrote to their daddy!)

The finished product turned out great, and I'm thinking I'll make more of these for my home--with different photos and maybe some cute words. This makes a great gift, too!

Please share links to any fun, handmade items you have made in order to display your cherished photos!