The old and new picture frame

Recently I acquired what I think was a busted (non-functioning) light. This doesn't sound particularly noteworthy, except for the part where I thought to myself, That looks like a nice picture frame.

Game on!

It's basically a square frame with 25 five-inch squares, in five columns and five rows, so first, I ordered a bunch of photos. I had planned to do 5x7-inch photos because each square is five inches, but I quickly remembered that 25 5x7 photos are a heck of a lot more expensive than 25 4x6 photos. I decided to print 4x6s instead and grab a white piece of tagboard to serve as my "matting" for each photo. I cut the photos down to 4x4 inch squares. I measured out the squares with a yardstick and pencil, then taped photos in the middle of each square with double-sided tape.

Then I popped out the frosted glass and picked up a new piece of plexiglas from the local hardware store for $8. (You can custom-order glass and plexiglas there, which I think is neat. Also, somehow this project jumped ahead of our coffee table's broken glass panel in the priority line.)

Then I put it all together.

Voila! Here's the final product, sitting on my bookshelf ladder. You might recognize a few.

Next, it was time to explore locations for my new frame. I thought about hanging it over our desk, but I honestly just didn't feel like making sure that the frame wouldn't fall and crash onto my sewing machine and computer.

Then I saw the perfect space on our bookshelf. This bookshelf came with our apartment, and I remember being asked on the tour if we wanted the landlord to get rid of it, and we basically yelled, "NO!" It's one of my favorite parts of our home, partly because of its little ladder for reaching the highest shelves. Anyway, I ran into a little roadblock here because I thought it surely wouldn't be that hard to condense a shelf's worth of books by choosing a couple dozen to donate - which, as book lovers know, is an impossible dilemma. I suddenly came up with all kinds of reasons why I might need a textbook I haven't cracked open in a decade. I shuffled some things around and was finally successful.

Here it is!

And, you know, me posing with it. Just because. Probably just because I don't perch on the ladder as much as I should.

I was worried that the pictures would be too small, but I can still appreciate each one even when I'm sitting on the couch across the room. I am by no means a master repurposer, but I love this effort's result.