I just love Darcy Miller from Martha Stewart Weddings. She is so talented and clever! I happened to see the episode where she was sharing her scrapboxes with Martha. SO AMAZING!!!
One in particular caught me eye...The Framed Photo Confetti Box.
Well I didn't have any photo confetti, but I have lots of pictures and a photo printer. I didn't do a step-by-step of this as I wasn't blogging yet, but will do one as I'm going to recreate the above picture for both of my brothers. (Not really worried about spoiling the surprise for them...they're not exactly craft/food blog followers! )
Basically, this is what I did:
I made a file folder on my computer with a special label just for these pictures.
Then I went through folders I had already created for each of my family members, copying the pictures of them that I wanted to use and transferring them to the above mentioned folder. (I tried to be sure there were an equal number of pictures of all the siblings...if you have children, you know how this goes...lots of pictures of first child, some of 2nd child and, well, the 3rd child has the fewest.) This one has 120 pictures. I took each picture, transferred it to a Print Shop program, cropped and resized to about 7/8" square.
The page was full of tiny black & white photos of my sweet family.
Then I made my own "confetti" by punching out each picture with a 3/4 circle punch. On a 12 x 12 piece of heavy white cardstock, I lightly lined out a grid in pencil. I erased the lines except for the "+" where the lines intersected. With mini glue dots I randomly added each photo. I also created a little label that I also printed with the photo that said "Earley Family, Est. 1959" I added it to the left corner, close to a picture of my paretns at their wedding. Since I didn't have any scrapboxes or shadow boxes on hand, I used a 12 X 12 frame I got 1/2 off at hobby lobby. It worked great!
I made this for my parents as a late 51st Wedding Anniversary gift. They seemed to really like it!
I did these (there are actually two) for the boys' cowboy bedroom. The inspiration came from a photo I saw in a catalog (I think it was Land of Nod.) Its just freehanded, would probably look lots better (especially the lettering) if I would have taken the time to trace some letters. It was just a major accomplishment to get them painted! Besides putting their names on the stars, I also wrote their Bible verse around the edges of the canvas. (Someday I'll add photos of the nursery and the OFF THE CHARTS mural my m-i-l did...it also includes their Bible verses...very sweet!)
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