Make It Happen Mama: Faith & Empty Frames

It all started with a framed print my husband received from one of his coworkers for Christmas 2009. I liked the sentiment ("Faith: to hope for things which are not seen"). I liked the cross. I like the matte. I was not really feeling the gold frame. Then there was the size. It's pretty teeny. Look how small it looked by itself on our bedroom wall!

But, as I said, I liked the sentiment. So there it sad, all by its lonesome, for all of 2010. Every morning, when I woke up, it was the first thing I saw. Every morning, when I woke up, I thought, my goodness I need to do something with that! I looked around a few stores when I was there on other errands, but never found anything that quite fit to go with it. Plus that gold frame was still bothering me. Then life and laundry and work and wifery and decluttering and dance shows all seem to get in the way and my little faith print was pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.

Then, one day early in January 2011, I was struck with a thought. If faith is about things not seen, why not surround the print with things not seen? Why not frame those things? Empty frames. I put a Wanted post up on Freecycle, and within a few hours had picked up five picture frames. Two were gold (one with matting), one was black, one was glass with attached glass, and the last was green with the inscription, "good times". It certainly is good times when I have a project to do!

I laid out the frames with my print, to see if I could make it work. Not bad, right? But a great big UGH to the original colors!

So there was only one solution: paint! Luckily, I happened to have some black spray paint on hand (left over from another project), but I couldn't find any rubber gloves. I didn't take a picture, but please believe me when I say that my hands (especially the left one) were *black* for a couple days. I scrubbed, I rinsed, I used nail polish remover, I used alcohol...I gave up and decided to embrace my newly colored hands :-) I did remember to paint in a well-ventilated place (our patio), though, and put plastic bags under my frames so my project table didn't end up as black as my hands.

I love painting. I hate waiting for paint to dry. Eventually, though, it did, and I was very excited to hang the final results on the wall. What do you think?

My view from the bed has certainly improved, in my opinion! Monkey Boy walked in, took a look and asked, "When are you putting in the pictures, Mommy?"