Finally, a Post Here!

You may say, ok, you silly woman - why are you going to so much trouble to do this? I am going to show you how I make a double matt in a picture frame just using stock card. Yes, it is easy. Maybe I just wanted to do something besides read, lie in the bed or on the couch, watch TV, read other blogs, check email - get the picture? I had fun just playing with paper and my camera, and, yes, I used a rotary cutter on paper. So the photo above shows all my supplies. (Did I mention this is good practice for doing a tutorial later? A friend wants me to do one on making a pillowcase dress but I just wasn't in the mood to sew today.)

Also, I can't believe I haven't posted anything here in almost a week! So first of all, I looked through my 12 x 12 papers and narrowed it down to these four - a blue pattern, a green with huge polka dot pattern, and two solids, a hot pink and a blue.

I eliminated the green immediately for two reasons - the walls in her playroom (where I am going to hang these photos) are green and that's just too much green and the polka dots were so big they just wouldn't show up in the inside "matt". Now I've got the patterned blue, the solid blue and the solid hot pink. The photos were taken of little "pooh bear" last year at a new shopping mall in the northern part of our state where I went with her and her mommy to meet her aunt for a weekend of shopping, eating out and just being together - just a girls' weekend. She was about 18 months old.

This is really a "back burner" project so I feel good that I got it done today. I printed these 4 x 6 photos with the purpose of hanging them in a frame such as this. So I place the frame over the three different papers to try to help me decide which paper to use.

I decide to use the hot pink because it makes the photos "pop". There's already so much blue in her dress in the photos and the blue mod print just doesn't show up that much. So now I measure and decide how I'm going to cut the pink because I only have one 12 x 12 sheet. The openings are for 5 x 7 photos and I have 4 x 6 photos so I am going to cute three 5 x 7 pieces of the hot pink cardstock.

Here I am drawing the pieces to cut.

I heard that scrapbooking enthusiasts are using rotary cutters now so I got out my quilting rotary cutter and tried it for the first time on paper. It works great. I have seen different blades in the stores for this purpose in wavy patterns, etc. I always wondered why you would get a wavy blade and now I know that you can use them on paper as well as fabric. So here I have cut my three 5 x 7 pieces out of the 12 x 12 sheet.

Then I use the photo stickers and place them on the back side of the three pieces of hot pink cardstock. Another reason to post this was for the purpose of practicing using my camera in a manual mode. I changed my F stop and shutter speed in almost every photo because in some, I wanted shallow depth of field and some I wanted deep depth of field. This was good practice.

Here I just turned them over and placed them directly on the paper with photos that came in the frame.

Now I place the triple 5 x 7 matt on top of my pink cardstock to make sure all areas are covered and only pink paper is showing - just checking :)

Now I am just directly placing (temporarily) the photos on top of the pink cardstock to see what arrangement of the photos I like the best before I permanent affix them. I like this arrangement the best. I really would have liked the photo on the left for the middle but she is looking to the right and I would have needed to place a photo in the left hand side looking to the left which would mean it would look off-balance with her looking left picking the flowers or looking left standing. So I chose the outside photos to be looking toward the center and put the "picking flowers" (which is a really different photo) in the middle. I hope all this makes sense. It just all felt right to me and I liked it.

Now I permanently affix the photos in the arrangement I like directly on top of the cardstock, place that part into the frame and place the white matt on top. I also cleaned and dusted everything and made sure the Windex was dry ( I sprayed the Windex on the cloth, not on the glass ).

With everything in the frame, now it is turned over to the back ready for the chipboard back to be put in place.

The chipboard backing is put back in place and locked.

Now I turn it over to make sure everything looks even and see if any adjustments need to be made.

Then I go hang it on the wall. I just "eyeballed" it, used a medium-sized nail with a big head and could not find the hammer so used a shoe! I like it. The green color of the wall is a little brighter than the photo, there are ice pink sheers over plantation shutters in the room, and the area rug in the middle is the same color as the hot pink cardstock. Furniture is white. I'll take a photo of the entire room when it's cleaned up! This is the same room that had the beanie baby Christmas tree with pink fabric and pink tulle for the Christmas tree skirt.

I'm happy to have finished something on the "back burner" for almost a year and felt like at least part of my day was useful and a little crafty! (The frame, including the matt, I think I got at CVS. I watch when they put their frames on sale - buy one regular price and get the second 50% off.) I think they have cute frames. NOTE: I think the reason I got such cute little poses from her is because I used a telephoto lens, sat on a bench and she thought I was just watching her play. She didn't know I was photographing her. The telephoto lens is supposedly good for portraits, less distortion.