Snapbox Prints provided me with prints for this post. All opinions are my own.
Happy Monday! Hope you all had an amazing Easter weekend! We enjoyed gorgeous weather and an awesome Easter Sunday, partaking in what’s become my favorite Easter tradition- the kickball game in my parents’ back yard! It’s small, and fun, and we all give it our best and laugh at each other ourselves. It’s the stuff of memories!
Speaking of memories, I am excited to share a post with you today about displaying your photos. I have been dragging my feet in getting family photos up on our walls, not because I didn’t want them there, but because I am never certain of the layout I want, or which photos to choose. (We were lucky enough to have several beautiful photos to choose from that Eddie of Jalapeno Photography took for us.) I decided to use an antique door and hang some vintage gold frames filled with black and white photos. I had found a set of gold frames with vintage art at a yard sale a couple years ago, and I loved that they were gold, vintage, and a set. I’d been holding onto them for a while, just waiting for the right photos and space.
As you can see above, each photo is framed out with a border. I had an odd frame size (each measured 10×15) and wasn’t sure how I was going to find the right mat to work for my project. Snapbox Prints offers fine art paper prints that each have a 3″ border around the photo print. The fine art paper is a great card stock quality matte paper that is perfect when you don’t want to use a matt as well; the border serves as a mat. Here’s a look at what the paper looks like to give you an idea. You can see it has a great texture and finish.
Each print came individually wrapped for protection. I love that feature, because so many times I have ordered prints only to have them all stacked which can damage the photo quality.
I also want to mention that if you don’t have frames you want to use (I had very specific frames in mind since I wanted true vintage gold), you can order your prints framed as well, so all you have to do when they arrive is display them!
So now let’s get back to the actual display itself. I brought home this chippy old door and gave it a good scrubbing before I brought it into the house, and cleaned off any loose chips of paint for safety purposes. I leaned it in the corner I wanted to place it in the living room and worked on what layout of frames would work best with it prior to even ordering prints so I knew what orientation I needed to order.
It turned out that three frames horizontally on the top panel of the door was perfect. I laid them out evenly, and nailed directly into the door to hang and align properly.
With the layout set up, I looked through all of my photos from our two sessions with Jalapeno Photography and selected one of each child, and one of me and Chris that all laid horizontally. I uploaded my photos to Snapbox Prints and ordered 8×10, so that I was left with plenty of border on each print (which I planned to trim to fit my odd sized frames).
When the prints arrived just a few days later, I was so excited to get to work and finally display them! I took my three vintage frames down and removed the vintage art.
Each frame had its original framing paper still mostly in tact, but it was dry and brittle. The first one I tore out, but that made a mess with little dry paper shreds everywhere.
I learned my lesson and with the second two, I used a razor to cut the paper out with nice straight lines.
Once the paper was removed, I was able to see what laid underneath, a nice thick piece of cardboard and nails to hold it all in place.
Everything was in pretty good shape, so I was able to just bend the nails back a bit and take out the cardboard. Underneath I discovered that the “prints” that were framed were actually calendar pages from the 1950’s. I thought that was pretty cool- and two of them were April, which I thought was very neat as well.
I removed the old prints and cleaned the glass thoroughly on both sides. To get my own prints the perfect size, I used the cardboard backing and centered it over my own prints, one at a time.
I used a pencil to draw a faint outline of the cardboard backing.
I then used scissors to trim away the excess. As an afterthought, I should have used my rotary cutter and will do that in the future. My scissors worked well, but the rotary cutter would be easy!
Once they were trimmed properly, I placed my prints in the frames, secured the backing in place with the nails again, and hung them on my door.
I love the way this door adds character to that empty corner with its chippiness…
And patina on the old hardware…
And now I finally have family photos on display and I didn’t even have to make holes in the wall. Come to think of it, this would be a great solution for renters.
You might also spy some other changes that have happened in the living room, like the new rug…. I am still working in there, but trust me once I have it where I want it, I’ll be sharing a full update!
I also want to mention that my friend Brynne of is sharing an amazing Snapbox project today and tomorrow! Today she’s talking about how to prepare vintage images for large format printing. Head over to The Gathered Home to check it out- I got a sneak peek of this project and it is AWESOME.
Thank you so much to Snapbox Prints for providing me with fine art prints for this post!
