Vintage family photos

Before

After

I recently got to help a friend reframe and hang all her family photos and what a delightful time we had!   We laughed and cried, and ended up with this fantastic wall in her upstairs hall.  I took all 47 of the photos home and typed up the histories that she had written on the back of each photo.  His parents and her parents told her everything they knew about each family member.   We cut each of the histories out with a paper cutter and glued them to the back of each finished frame before we hung them at the end of the project.

We took all the photos to the fabulous Jennifer at Style in Kingsport, and she helped us transform them into a more uniform look.  My original idea was white mats and black frames for everything, and we chose 4 different molding styles to keep it simple.  We were able to reuse some of the original frames by spray painting them black.  We carefully chose a white for the mat that was not too bright, so that we did not overwhelm the photos.  

When Jennifer finished with the HUGE frame job, we picked them up and began to attempt to arrange them.  Of course, matted, they took up way more space than they had originally.  We laid them out on a bed, cut out brown paper templates of each frame and taped the templates to the wall, rearranging until we were happy.  We were able to do the actual hanging in about 2 hours!  We were so delighted with the results.  You can see each photo now, and it is really beautiful in person.

His dad.  Yummy.

His parents.

Her Irish dad.  Looks like trouble!

Her parents at a dance.  He looks like he knows he is with the prettiest girl there.

Gorgeous.  Look at the v groove in the mat and the beautiful frame.

So pretty!

This is actually the dog from the Our Gang (Spanky and the Little Rascals) show.  Doesn't she remind you of Darla?