Photo Finish

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Frame by Frame Style

A little over a week ago, we added three new frames to our stairway wall. The top right frame was based on a pin I found on Pinterest. I made the printed quote using Pages on my computer and then I printed my design on to plain white paper or you can also use card stock.

On the other side of our stairway, we already have several small frames lining the wall. Eventually, we will add to these small photos and make this collection more of a collage of photos.

Speaking of collages… Our collage on the foyer wall looks like it needs a few more photos to continue on to our stairway wall. Right now it looks like something is missing from the top left corner of the foyer wall.

I bought a few frames during our last trip to Ikea that I was planning to use in our bedroom, but now a few of those frames may find a different home in the foyer. It’s time to get out the paper and painter’s tape and start planning the blending of our two collages!

Do you have any projects planned for this weekend?

Picture Perfect

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

So what have BJ and I been up to lately? Quite a lot actually.

First, we added some new furniture to our master bedroom.

Then we finally started adding pictures on the wall of our upstairs hallway.

I also bought a few more frames to add more photos to the walls of the upstairs hallway and continue into the loft. BJ and I also started planning out how we would like to design the space in the loft. Right now, it is a mix of furniture and not really usable. We have a projector that we would like to use for movies and we are thinking about turning the loft into a movie/game room. We both went to the same University, so we would like to incorporate our alma mater into the theme in a classy way.

Here’s where we stand now, it’s pretty empty. Just a few piece of furniture and no seating.

One of the challenges of this room is that it is the first thing you see when you come up the stairs. We’ve gone back and forth on the design of the loft. We’ve talked about putting a sectional couch and adding some bookshelves, and we’ve also discussed just putting some chairs from Ikea with the ottomans and making it more of a place to relax and kick back. If we go with the Poang chairs, then we plan to add a few side tables and skip the coffee table.

There are many options to choose from and I’m sure we will find something perfect for our space. In the meantime, we’re enjoying coming up with some over the top ideas and then of course, ruling those out. But if money were no object, we would have a pretty cool looking loft already! 🙂

Lilies Galore!

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Frame by Frame Style

I’ve posted a lot of flowers and our gardens lately, but with all of this beautiful weather, it’s been hard to stay inside! With that said, here are a few more beautiful flowers from our gardens! Our lilies are doing wonderful and the petunias I planted over a week ago, are still going strong!

Since I’ve taken a bunch of flower photos lately, I’ve been thinking about putting together another photo collage for our wall. This one will include some of our travel (last weekend we paid a visit to Philadelphia, but more on that later…) as well as some of the photos from our garden, or maybe I will put together two collages!

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! Ours was great! I will post more later this week on our fantastic Memorial Day weekend trip to Philly!

Fall is on its way!

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Frame by Frame Style

It’s starting to feel like fall again! The weather is back in the 70s, college football season is among us, pumpkin lattes are being served and the leaves are starting to turn a little less green. It’s time for football games, sweatshirts and hot chocolate.

Fall officially begins on September 23 this year, but today certainly felt like autumn weather to me! It was a gorgeous 65-70 degrees!

The forecast for this week is going to be awesome! Only getting into the 80s one day (courtesy of weather.com):

If you search for “Fall” on Pinterest, the boards are literally buzzing with inspiration for home decor, fashion, photography and more. I love it! Fall is one of my favorite color palettes with the deep oranges, reds and yellows!

To help celebrate the coming of Autumn, I changed the scents in our wallflowers to fall scents and I started decorating for the chiller months.

Since it’s not officially Fall yet, I decided to only get out a few of my autumn decorations. I still have more stored away in our spare bedroom closet and I will continue to bring them out over the next few weeks. I didn’t want to go to crazy this weekend. After all, I’m one of those people that complains about retail stores decorating for Christmas before Halloween.

Thanks to a long holiday weekend (Happy Labor Day everyone 🙂 ) I had some time to work on projects and get the house cleaned up for friends and family that will be visiting us later this month. On Saturday, I picked up some square frames for a project I’ve been wanting to do for years, but just never got around to it. I’ve had some fabric remnants siting around and I thought it would be great to use them as wall decorations. This weekend, I finally completed my project!

If you’re interested in doing this project, you will need four square frames, four fabric remnants and scissors.

From the fabric remnants, I chose four pieces that I liked and cut them to fit the frames. Pretty easy!

The finished product turned out bright and colorful:

I chose the bright colors to go against the purple wall in my office. Later this evening, we are going to hang the Ikea shelves in my office. I’m excited! Once we get them up and I get everything organized on them, I will post with pictures of the finished project. More to come soon!

The kitchen island and a home for my wrapping paper photo frames

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Frame by Frame Style

After we moved into our house and began unpacking all of our existing kitchen dishes and appliances and then added all of our wedding gifts on top of that, we quickly filled up every existing storage space in our kitchen. We had things crammed in our cabinets and we were constantly digging around and stuffing to get everything to fit. Most people would consider getting rid of some of their items, but not us. Our solution: build more storage so our appliances and dishes could be spread out around the kitchen. The result: our fabulous kitchen island, built by us! Well, all of the pieces are from Ikea and we designed and assembled the whole thing.

Our goal with the island was to not only increase our existing storage space, built also to have a big workspace for preparing meals and a place to entertain guests in our kitchen while we prepare meals. We also wanted a place where we could eat dinner in our kitchen, but we weren’t interested in the traditional dinette table. The unit is also freestanding which will allow us to take it with us if or when we move out (some disassembly required).

The color choice of the island, which is different from our existing cherry kitchen cabinets was to create a contrast between the dark wood and the white cabinets. We also wanted to brighten up the kitchen. The dark cabinet and dark floor needed something that would pop against them! We chose the butcher block counters for a couple of reasons. First, they look really nice with the white cabinets and second, they were much more cost effective then the granite countertops we originally picked out. Because the bar and the work surface were two different pieces, the cost of granite skyrocketed.

Here’s our progress as we put the island together:

Zoey was also very helpful during the assembly. She supervised the entire project.

Some of the other fun features of the island include, the hidden trash can…

The book shelve for cookbooks and decorations…

And the cabinets to display our drink ware (with lights installed!):

So lastly, you might have noticed the new home for my Beating the Heat DIY project. I was originally planning to hang the frames in the kitchen on the backsplash, but I changed my mind after tapping the frames up to see how they would look. I’m happy to report that they still look great in the kitchen. I placed them on a few of the counters and I really like how they look. I think they’ve found their new home… for awhile at least!

They really brighten up the kitchen!

Wall Art

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Frame by Frame Style

“No, Watson, this was not done by accident, but by design.”
— Sherlock Holmes

Foyer photo collage

I love photo collages. I love designing them, hanging them and most of all, I love taking the photos that make up our many photo collages. To me, photo collages are a simple, yet elegant way to hang photos like art and showcase my hobby to those who visit our home.

Photo collages are a great DIY project for someone who is looking to dress up a wall with their own personal touch. You can use family photos, scenic photos, nature photos or mix and match. The sky is the limit. If you are not photographer by any means, or just aren’t sure you want to hang photos all over your wall, you can instead use framed fabric or beautiful wrapping paper. You can even dress up a wall with several different styles of frames. It’s up to you. Below are a few of the many photos collages around our home. Almost all of the photos (which the exception of one or two) were taken by me or my husband BJ.

My favorite collage is the one that hangs above the dining room entryway. It’s located in the front foyer and catches your eye as soon as you walk in our front door. In order to get the photos up that high, I really had to plan out exactly how I wanted to execute the finished product.

Supplies needed: frames, photos, computer paper folded to the size of the frame, painter’s tape, nails, hammer, level, one really tall ladder and courage (to climb the really tall ladder).

In order to get the photos on the wall in the arrangement I wanted, I needed a way to transfer the arrangement from floor to the wall so I could see to move things around if needed. This also help prevent multiple nail holes. Below is the collage arranged on the floor so I could use something to reference when I transferred the design to the wall.

Next, I took the computer paper that I folded to match the size of each frame, and taped it to the wall.

Once I finished arranging and making adjustments to the paper on the wall, BJ used the paper as a reference to place each nail hole. Below is the finished product:

Here are a few more photo collages I designed.

This arrangement is located in the guest bath. The quote in the black square frame was done using a graphic I found online and then overlaying text on top of graphic. I used Pixelmator to design the finished product and then printed the design and cut it to fit the frame.