More Stuff for Kris!!!

I KNOW, I KNOW.....

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted, 

leaving you guys with a cliff hanger.....

But I am back to remedy that situation!!!!!

When last we met.....

I was telling you about framing some artwork for Kris's guest room.

I was talking about reframing this pair of needlepoint pictures.

 As you can see, the frames were pretty beat up.

The black didn't work in the grouping we were creating.

They needed to be reinvented.

I liked the old gold liner behind the black, so we decided to keep that.

Sooooooo.....

Kris and I took a trip to our local high falutin' custom framing shop in Cambridge Massachusetts.

When you step through the doors, you're inundated with a cornucopia of fabuloso frames.

 Walls and walls of the things.....

 We had a really wonderful woman help us choose frames and mats.

We spread everything out on the table and went to work.

When I concentrate.....

I tend to get tunnel vision...

and I don't watch where I'm going.....

 Notice this stack of pictures leaning against the desk??????? 

 WELL, I DIDN'T!!!!!

I had a framing accident.

on my leg!!!!!

(the above picture was taken, after all the blood was cleaned up.)

The medic was called in,

this place was fully stocked for idiots JUST LIKE ME!!!!!

Anyway,

after the blood was cleaned up and the lawsuit was filed.....

Kris and I got back to the serious act of choosing frames.

We started with the little oils she found on eBay.

The difference between custom and stock frames, is the corners are made to order.

 The stock isn't just cut as needed and mitered.

Aren't they pretty?????

Soooooo.....

that's what we were looking for, for Kris.

 I wanted the look of an old 1930's style frame.

See the way the old frame from the 20's she already had looked?

It had a beautiful custom corner.

So, that was our goal.

The scariest part of the experience wasn't all the blood that was shed by yours truly.....

it was when Kris had to bring out her check book.....

 Not to be forgotten....

but any good frame shop has a dog that comes to work with the owner.....

as you can see, he's an important part of the design process,

Here are the pictures after their redo.

 Don't they look like old frames?????

We laid them out on the bed, to see how we wanted to hang them.

NOW IT WAS TIME TO ATTACK THE WALL!!!!

One down....(or should I say up????)

 Two....

Since this was where the door swung open, we had to make sure it looked OK when the door was open!!!!

I liked the way the new frames worked together.

On to the next side.....

 All up!

What a #$% pain in the @$$

It is so much fun to hang a bunch of stuff on the wall!!!!!

 Now my clutter loving heart is sooooo happy!!!!!

Here's a side by side for comparison.....

I know some haters out there are going to prefer it with just the one picture.

BUT.....

that's the beauty of each of us having our own houses.

We can do whatever the #$% we want.....

(if our hubby's don't complain too loudly.)

On that note,

(I'm in Flerida....so let me just say....)

Later, Gator!!!

Framing Pictures

Going back in my archives.......,

I stumbled upon the pictures I took of Kris's and my trip to the framing shop in Cambridge.

I used to use a custom framer in the Back Bay of Boston, but they may be

 out of business....,

I haven't gone to them in years because of the difficulty in parking.

If you've never been shopping in this area......

It's a 1/2 hour of circling the block trying to find a space,

and 15 minutes of shopping.

OK......maybe 20 minutes of shopping.

Then I started using a workroom in the Boston Design Center.

This was very convenient.

We could carry the art in through the loading dock, which was right near the studio space in the design center.

WELL.....

They went out of business.

So,

then I was just floundering around in the dark,

using less than stellar framing shops.....

whereupon my good buddy Kris informed me that there was a good framer on Concord Ave in Cambridge!!!!!

I've been driving by this place for eons and never noticed it.

WELL.....

Only the best and most posh places will do for Kris and Betsy.

Nothing says fancy like a dumpster right by one's front door!!!!!

Don't you love the beauty of cropping!

Notice the bike rack.....this is definitely Cambridge.

Very crunchy granola. 

The reason we needed to go to the framer is because.....

although Kris and I had decided not to hang lots of stuff on the walls of her guestroom,

we weren't able to keep to that decision.

We just are not less is more kinda girls.

NO NO NO NO NO WE ARE NOT!!!!!

We had reached this point in her guest room.

BUT

having just that one painting on the wall was just bugging us.

It just was.

We needed more stuff.

That's just how it was.

We couldn't fight it.

We tried.

We really did.......

The rest of the room was coming along.....

We hung lots of stuff over the chest of drawers.....

We had added 

some stuff over the chair......

sooooooo.....

Kris started tooling around eBay, and found some old oil on board paintings that had the same feel as the large oil we had already hung by the beds.

I played around with how I wanted them to be arranged.

I liked how the two looked alongside the bigger one, but we only had two!!!!!

We needed four!!!!!

Sooooooo.....

Kris and I did what we always do.....

we went shopping in the stuff she already had.

A while back

we had found a pair of framed needlepoints at auction.

However, once we got them back to Kris's house, we didn't want to use them they way we had planned while sitting on our @$$'s at the auction.

We tried them several places, but nothing seemed to work.

Putting one between the beds was OK, but it seemed a shame to waste the other one.

So we hung the rose water color that I had worked on by painting the mat.

AND THEN.....

Kris bought another painting on eBay....

She liked the idea of having a couple of portraits of young girls in the room.

She just loved the face of this little girl.

BUT!!!!!

the needlepoints were the right size for hanging around the large painting by the bed.

BUT.....

the black frames had to go.

They had a beautiful inner liner that was gold.

THAT we wanted to keep.

Sooooo....

we trundled on over to the framing shop and found some beautiful solutions for both the needlepoints and the little oils.

THIS IS A CLIFF HANGER!!!!!!!

I will show you what we did and how we did it in my next post.

On that note,

Latah, Gatah