February

For the month of February, I thought it would be nice to stick to a theme...

After watching the entire series of Daria on Netflix in January,

 I was inspired by the infinite wisdom of Trent Lane's lyrics in the following Mystic Spiral classic:

(I particularly love how the guy taping this recorded it with so much class)

So, for the first frame for your freakin friends, I thought we could use up all those old holiday gift cards you received that are now all spent, since you're poor like me and can't afford anything during the month of January because the last time you got paid was the middle of December.

To start, it would be easier to just decorate a cheap frame from a secret santa gift that you really don't care about and were probably going to re-gift anyway. 

Well, I had one. Then I dropped it and the glass shattered and the cheap plastic frame broke and all I had left was the backing of the frame. 

This is a photographic journey of how I reconstructed it to function as a frame again.

(foam core)

(mat board measured like this x2)

(one piece cut with the top open, so the photo can slide in and out)

(and one on top as a traditional mat)

(i hot glued the foam core to the remnants of the back of the cheap frame, to the 1st mat board, to a small piece of plexi, to the 2nd mat board...)

(... slid the photo in the opening at the top and added some pizzazz with metallic paint)

After trying to recycle the back of that stupid cheap frame, I let my financial frustration out on those cards. If you want to cut them into random shapes that's fine, but I went for the classic square.  I also chose to cut up old grocery store cards I never go to anymore. The more color, the merrier.

Oh, and scissors don't always do the trick. The yellow thing in the top corner of the photo above is a scorer. It works quite well to cut anything thick and plasticky. 

When all is hot glued down, place your new frame someplace your freakin friends can find it.

... freakin friends.