Sunday, March 6, 2011

Repurposing makes me happy!

Almost as good as finding an awesome deal on something that I can transform into "my own," is taking something I've used and use it again in another way. It started when planning our wedding about two years ago. I knew I wanted to make it a personal affair and was looking for ways to do that. Our venue had this beautiful room, I think originally purposed as a study, with beautiful built-in bookshelves. I had the idea to put pictures of us, and our guests in frames scattered on the bookshelves. Since we had such a small wedding (60?) and the people we invited were people we were close to, we were able to put photographs of us with our guests next to their place cards for dinner. It gave a little structure to finding their names, but not the typical alphabetical order. I bought all the frames at (shhhh) the dollar store. Yep, a dollar a piece. They were almost all different (in style and color) so I spray painted them all a pretty metallic bronze to tie them together. I love me some good spray paint!

After the wedding, I took all the pictures out, and repainted the frames all black.  I put some of the old photos back in and changed some others. I used the frames on the walls in the staircase leading to the basement. The picture here of the staircase is just plain horrible. It looks really yellow, but the walls are actually way more sand than yellow.  Even though they were only a buck a piece, it still felt good to reuse the frames for something else! Money well spent in my book! My original plan was to sell the frames after the wedding. Not to make money, but to get at least something back, but I think this was far better.


We also used the frames to highlight things like the bar menu
This is one of the bookshelves from the reception. This was taken after everyone took their place cards which is why it looks a little bare.

pile-o-frames after painting and letting them dry

We have lots of family and friends in these photos and it's nice to see their faces, even if it's only in photos!


(The first two pictures were taken by our amazing photographer, Alan Bushnell.) 

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