Nothing but a bunch of empty frames...

If there's one craft that is the epitome of what this blog is about it is the Frame Wall.  Google Image "Frame Wall" and you'll see that the crafting types have pretty much taken over the term, but a few hits still bring up the original, manly, frame [aka 2x4 stud] wall. 

Mandy even mentioned it when she let the word out about my blog.  You all know what it is.  In fact, most of you either have a frame wall or wish you did.  When Mandy first told me about the idea, it took her a few tries as I just didn't get it. It's a wall of empty frames.  Empty.  Frames.  On a wall.  Again, the frames are empty.  You can see the wall through the frame.  Thoughts that ran through my head, in no particular order:

1. Why hang empty frames on a wall?  The function of a frame is to "frame" something.
2. Where are these frames coming from?  [answer:  garage sales.  We had a stack of frames from garage sales in our basement storage room that grew for a couple of months.  I had to step over it all the time.  I'd organize it and lean them up against the shelf only to have more stacked there after the next round of garage sales]
3. That's a lot of frames, which means a lot of holes in the wall.  Holes that I'll have to patch up later when we redecorate. Wouldn't online photo books actually hold pictures and leave a lot less work for later?

Once Mandy had acquired a sufficient number of frames I got to help prep them.  We pulled out whatever picture and backing were in them (some of these were nice pictures...some not so nice).  One of them was a very large picture that had obviously cost some real bucks to frame at one point.  But out it came with the mat knife and into the trash.  Another sacrifice at the alter of crafting.

We also had to pull out the glass.  We ended up with a stack of glass that sat in our basement for a couple weeks while Mandy tried to think of something crafty to do with it.  Unfortunately, frame glass is pretty useless.  It's not pretty and not thick enough to be structural.  And our recycling company wouldn't take it.  I tried posting it for free on Craigslist because I hated the thought of just tossing it. No takers...who can blame them?  I didn't want it either.  Finally Mandy said she'd take them into the garage and break them up and toss them.  Images immediately came to my head of Mandy in stitches, kids with shards in their bare feet and glass chips everywhere.  I took over and took them up and one by one, put them in a paper bag, broke them, and tossed them.  It was quite the process.  In retrospect, I'm pretty sure Mandy knew I would do it even before she volunteered.

Next came the hanging of the pictures on the wall.  Mandy took care of most of this with her cousin Kate, who is tall and could reach most of spots on the stairs.  The last part required a ladder and that was saved for me. I didn't know it was being done until I came home from work and saw the other frames on the wall.

I was responsible for hanging the large yellow frame and the frames inside it.  Mandy said just to eyeball the locations, but that just wasn't going to happen.  Tape measure. Mechanical pencil. Fractional division.  Once I had it all plotted out, up they went.  Notice how they are all perfectly horizontally symmetrical?  I was going for vertical symmetry as well, but made a math mistake on the two dark frames in the left of the picture and they ended up a bit high.  I started to re-do the math but Mandy said it was part of the charm and just to hang them up.  Still irks me a bit too this day.

Don't I look thrilled to be part of this fun project?  The step I'm standing on says "Do Not Step". 

The other week I was with a few other guys visiting the house of a crafting-type to help move some furniture and we noticed that she had a frame wall.  I was, of course, previously indoctrinated in the frame wall arena, so I just listened to their comments:  "Why are all the frames empty?"..."That's kind of creepy."