Framed Art Gift

I mentioned in a previous post that my sister-in-law's birthday was on Wednesday. I wanted to make her something for on her walls. She recently moved, and I had the idea for this as we were helping hang pictures on her walls.

Her husband isn't with them anymore, and her life revolves around her teen-aged children. They're out of the "cutesy" stage and don't like having their pictures taken quite as much anymore, but she still manages to have gorgeous portraits of them all over her walls. I created this frame to coordinate with the black-framed portraits in her living room.



Would you believe I used a Dollar Tree black frame for this? It's around 8x16", and it comes with a plain off-white mat already in it. It's designed to hold three 5x7" photos. Every other time I've used these frames, I've taken out the insert. But this time I decided to use it and just make it pretty.

All I did to that mat was add black flourishes with my Autumn Leaves flourishes stamp set. It made it look sooooo expensive and elegant that even I was shocked when I finished it. :) I've been scared to death of those flourish stamps, even though I love flourishes. I'm just not a random kind of gal, and I wasn't sure I could pull off a whole frame of flourishes. But here's proof that it's not hard, and mistakes don't usually show up.

I designed the 5x7" inserts on my computer. It's each of her kids' names, the origin of the name (English/Hebrew/etc.) and the meaning of the name. I found all the information online for free. You can find it by googling "name meaning" or anything close to that. I used Edwardian Script and Garamond fonts, and I loved how they turned out!

My sister-in-law is going to love this, and it only cost me $1!!