Make it....Frames

Yep, that beautiful, organized, and perfectly clean garage is mine.

Okay, this was during Christmas preparations.  This was a particularly difficult year in getting my Christmas plans done.  Luckily, a dear friend and I had already planned our Christmas neighbor gifts, and we had planned to make them together.  The parts we did do together were really fun, too bad, I wasn't as much help as I should have been.  But, that's why we have awesome friends...they forgive us when we are a little less awesome.

So...how to make it.

1.  Have fun crafty friends.

2.  Decide the size of frame you want.  And cut the wood to the appropriate size.

(Since we were making about 40-50 frames each, we decided to make them frames by taking thicker boards, and cutting it into 1 1/4" wide planks by about 22".  We really tried to get as many frames out of each plank we could, so measurements were a little free and easy)

3. Glue and Nail.  Instead of mitering the edges, we butted them together.  Dotting a little wood glue on each connection point, and then use a nail gun and nail those little babies.

4. Sand and Stain.   After the frames have dried from glueing, sand and distress the frames to your liking.  Remove the sawdust, and stain.  For our stain, we mixed a little brown and a little gray stain until it looked like we liked it.  (Super duper scientific and exact).

5.  Attach the chicken wire.

Holy bananas.  Get some leather gloves. And some awesome wire clippers, you are in for the long haul if you are making very many of these.  We made about 14 of the chicken wire variety before giving up.  I was cut to pieces all over my arms. My wrist hurt from all the wire cutting.  Let's just say it was unpleasant.

Use a staple gun.  AND A MILLION STAPLES.  To attach the chicken wire, using a staple on each intersection is necessary.  And crazy time consuming.  Just saying.  

6.  Maybe give up, and use STRING. 

After working on those chicken wire frames, which were super cute and fun, but 50?  Uh no.  So, we found this string solution.  SOOOOO much easier, less pain, and tons faster.

To make it easier, my hubby made a template from a wood yard stick, then marked where the string needed to be attached with staples.  Once the marks were made, staple, staple, staple.  And Done.

So fun!