clothespin frame

Have a lot of nieces and nephews?  I sure do.  One sister has six kids, the other two.  With that many, I'm guaranteed to receive updated photos of each kid all the time.  And continuously switching them out of individual frames was starting to become a pain.  Then I remembered this tutorial over at Creations by Kara.  I used this idea for some inexpensive wall decor in my dining room:

So I thought, why not use this same idea of a "nieces and nephews" picture frame?  That way I can just clip the pictures on there and switching out new and old will be a breeze.  I had an ugly white frame I got for free in college that used to house a Monet print, and while I'm a fan of Monet, it was time to re-purpose that sucker.  I spray-painted the frame until it was "espresso brown" (see, I would have just said dark brown but "espresso brown" sounds so much better), covered the glass with a fabric remnant, and hot-glued mini-clothespins all around the inside border.

Then I had to wait to hang it up until my toddler was a) awake so the hammering wouldn't bother him, and b) in his highchair eating so he wouldn't want to "help" me.  Here's the end result:

You may notice that the fabric isn't quite as tight (which is noticeable with a striped pattern), and the clothespins aren't the same color as the frame because I got the small can of spray-paint and didn't have enough to cover everything.  But guess what.  I like it anyway!  I left the frame empty for this picture for privacy reasons, but trust me, with the pictures in there you don't even notice these little imperfections.

And if the picture doesn't win you over, maybe this will:  I held my son up to the frame, and he immediately smiled because he recognized all of the kids in the pictures....and he waved "hi."  I think I melted a little.

So check out the link above if you want to make your own.  This one only cost me a few bucks, and now our hallway is a little less bare!

~ ~ ~ Come back later this week....a couple of the kids mentioned above have birthdays coming up; I love a good excuse to try a new project.  :o)