Hello everyone! I have been working really hard on cleaning out and organizing my craft room and I am a little bit embarrassed to tell you that one of the things I have found is that most of the mess has been caused by unfinished projects! Totally my own fault for having craft ADD and I am working really hard to remedy it. This project is one that I started ummm back in 2011. Seriously, so embarrassing! I made one of these photo displays for my sister in law for Christmas in 2011 and then decided I was going to make myself one too. That’s about as far as I got in the process though and I’ve been moving this shutter around with me for the past 3 years! I finally decided to finish it up and was even more embarrassed because it only took me 30 minutes to get done. *face palm*
Years ago my hubby worked for a painting company. They went out to a job where a couple had decided to replace all the shutters on their house and they were going to throw the old ones away. Knowing me and my love of dirty, old house parts he salvaged them and brought them home to me. Swoon! They were originally black and I was worried about how many coats of paint it was going to take to cover that and how on earth I was going to sand each of those slats and then I remember that I had some leftover chalky finish paint from my back splash. This was the perfect application for this paint because it requires NO prep work and it is a super thick paint. It only took one coat to cover all that old black paint!
While the paint dried on the shutter I pulled a bunch of little wooden stars out of my stash and stained them with my go to craft stain. By the time the were all stained and the brushes were all washed the paint was dry enough to start attaching the string. I used a regular stapler (i can’t find my heavy duty one) to staple some jute cord diagonally back and forth across the shutter from the top to bottom. I hammered it in the make sure it was extra secure and then used some E6000 to attach the wooden stars on top of the staples to cover them up.
I had to wait over night for the E6000 to dry and then it was as simple as using some teeny tiny clothespins to attach pictures to the string. I might have done this project back during the holidays and so these photos are displaying my Christmas cards, but you can use it to display anything! I am sure that as the seasons change I will change what I have hanging on there. Now go ahead and find yourself a shutter and make a photo display! Have you ever created an unusual photo display? What did you use?
