Hybrid Collage Wall Frame

I made this a few months ago for The Daily Scrapper and am finally getting around to sharing it here on my own blog. You will find all the directions here, but please be sure to check out The Daily Scrapper for tons of scrapping and other hybrid ideas.

This is probably one of my favorite so far and I got the idea from my friend Kate. She has made a few already although she uses abstract art to put on the non photo areas where I used digital papers I printed. If you’re not a digital scrapper, regular scrap papers work just as well. And without further ado, here it is.

Wall Frame

And a few close-ups.

It’s really pretty easy to create. I used Love is Here by Jazzmin Designs. I did however decide I wanted a different frame for it, and I am still looking, but as soon as I find one I like that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, I will be switching it out. OK, so you want to know how to create this, don’t you? Here it is.

My family has a very special relationship and this is what I wanted to focus on with my project. I wanted to showcase the love, friendship, tenderness, and all around fun that we all have together and I think this managed to accomplish just that. Again, this is pretty straight forward and easy.

Supplies

Love Is Here digital kit by Jazzmin Designs

Frame

Paint

Tape runner and glue

Chipboard

I used HP Everyday Photo Paper (it has a slight gloss finish, which I wanted)

Corner rounder (optional)

Other scrap embellishments

1. The frame I got was 16×20, so I figured out how many squares I wanted to fit across and down on my frame and how large each square should be. I went with 20 of them, 3.5×3.5 each. I created a basic 3.5 square in PS and just used that for each new little layout and saved each one with an a,b,c, etc after the file name. For the photo, I did not add anything, just making them fit the square, showing only the parts I wanted to print. Then I found papers and a few elements/word-art that I liked from the kit and created some photo-less squares. After I was done with them all, I placed them on an 8.5×11 canvas, ready for printing and printed them all.

2. I cut them out along with cutting 20 squares from the chipboard. I used my tape runner to attach all my squares to the chipboard and then I used a corner rounder on each one. That is optional, just depends on your taste and how you want them to look.

3. I painted the backing from my frame because I didn’t like the color it was. While that was drying, I went through my stash looking for a few little embellishments to add and adhered them to my squares where I wanted them, laying them out and moving them around until I got a design that I was pleased with.

4. Once the paint dried, all I did was adhere the squares to the frame backing and placed it in the frame. I am leaving the glass off, because I like that look, but you can certainly replace the glass on it if you want and it still fits with the embellishments you added.

And there you have it, a collage type wall hanging showcasing exactly what you choose.

I am thinking of making these for family for Christmas this year. Don’t you think they would be awesome gifts?

Family and Connections

The most important connections I have are with family and extended family (those people that are in my life that I consider family). For most of my life, we all lived within 5 miles of each other, but that has changed in the last few years, the biggest being my Mom’s move to Florida this year. Now it is my one sister, my daughter and me living on one side of the state with my other sister and nieces across the state in our home town and my Mom of course in Florida. For the 3 of us in the same city, it is pretty easy to connect with one another, getting together and doing things, from going to the store or on an outing of bigger proportions. I love being so close and being able to get together face to face and I drove the 3 and a half hours to Racine quite a bit the last couple of years to visit with my sister and Mom and plan to do it again and again to see my sister and nieces. This is my preferred way, but of course there are many, many ways we can connect in this day and age.

There has always been the mail and I love getting a card or letter or the best, a package. Although those are few and far between now with the computer and cell phones. We have become used to instant gratification with email and cell phones. For the most part we are guaranteed success of reaching who we want on our cell phones.

Niki and her permanent attachment, lol.

Email is sent and lands in the inbox within seconds and we usually get a reply in the time it takes for snail mail to reach our intended recipient, if not sooner. Computers have made staying connected even easier with IMs and webcams and Skype. Making distances not so distant. I don’t know how I would have handled not being able to chat with my daughter online or send and receive emails the 2 times she was in Iraq. It was still hard having her so far away and in harms way, but this made it easier.

But the times she was away, even though we chatted almost daily, the thing she loved the most was the letters and packages we sent. And as I stated earlier, I still love getting real, hold it in my hands, mail. There is just something about being able to feel the paper and see the handwriting of the person, that makes it so much better than an email. And I have stopped sending them myself for the most part, it’s just so much easier to hop online and write an email or pick up the phone and make a call. And while a phone call is still up there as one of the top things, because I love hearing a voice, I am going to make an effort to send out more cards and little packages to the people I love. Because it is just one more way to stay connected and who doesn’t like going to the mail box and seeing something that isn’t a bill or junk mail addressed to them?

This post was inspired by Madeline Bea and and The Sunday Creative.

Life is a Circle

No matter where you start.

Yesterday we were all gathered at my daughter’s home for a cook out. Family and friends having a good time despite the rain and humidity. And as is always the case once summer hits, I had my hair up, and so did my daughter. I hate my hair, it is unruly and frizzy, and has a little curl that drives me nuts, with all these little stragglers that curl out and won’t go up. My daughter and I go to the same stylist and as we were sitting there chatting yesterday, Niki says how much she hates the little bit of curl in her hair, and how the other day, when Christine was doing her hair she stated that Niki really has her mother’s hair. Now I think my daughter has gorgeous hair, nothing at all like mine, but I guess there is a little of me in there after all.

This made me think back to a few months ago when I did a scrapbook page with a photo of Niki and I both as babies, and for the first time I realized, that yes, she does look like me in some ways. For years I thought she looked nothing like me. When I was young everyone always said I looked just like my Dad, and I did. But now that I am older, when I look in the mirror, I see my Mom. And when Niki was just a baby and my Mom would have her for the day or when we visited were she worked, everyone always said Niki could be her’s. Now I see all the likenesses between us when I see a photo of all three of us together and I love it, because while we are not all the same, there are some things that connect us, that show we belong together. That we are family.

Me, Mom, and Niki

As kids, I think we all hate having to do chores and being told what to do. And we rebel. And give our parents a hard time. I know I did. And then I had my own child. I found myself saying some of the same things my mother always said to me. Then my daughter started rebelling. I remember very clearly the day I apologized to my Mom for being such a trial to her as I dealt with Niki, and  wondered how she had stayed sane and didn’t kill me. We all lived.

Then my daughter moved out on her own. With her second apartment, she lived with a male co-worker, and her boyfriend was there a good deal of the time. One day she says to me, “Every time the boys do the dishes, I have to tell them it includes wiping down the stove, the counters, and cleaning out the sink!” And almost every time she had to go behind them and do the a fore mentioned things. I laughed. And then laughed some more.  And wondered.  Did my Mom laugh when I said the same thing to her whenever Niki did the dishes when she was younger? Because I sure remember her telling us the same exact thing when we were kids.

I taught Niki to say please, thank you, and excuse me and to respect her elders. The same things I was taught and that I felt important for her to know. She is 26 now and married. They are in no hurry to have kids, there are things they want to do and buy before that. And there are many, many times when we are out together and we see unruly, snotty kids that she turns to me and says, “This is why I am not sure I want any.”

I hope she reads this. Maybe she will finally understand what I always tell her when she says that. It’s all in how you raise them. My mom raised me with the same values and morals she was raised with. And I in turn raised Niki with the same ideals. When we are all together; my grandma, my mom, aunts and uncles, and sisters and nieces and cousins, I see it in every one of us. I know that when Niki does decide to have kids, they will be taught the same things my Mom, me and she were taught. Her kids will not be unruly or obnoxious. And they will have some of the same characteristics that we all have. And they will belong to this wonderful line of people we call family.

Life is a circle.

This post is written as part of the Bigger Picture. You can join in this week at Corinne’s Blog.