Photo Holder Tutorial

I have a great imagination.  That's a good thing.  But sometimes my big ideas don't turn out quite as stunning as I imagine them.  But I love how this wire photo holder turned out!  

The idea: I wanted some way to display 12 months with my little boy. I wanted 1 picture from each month of his life to show how he's grown up right before our eyes!

To go along with our red/yellow/blue star theme for his birthday party, here is what I came up with:

There are 4 stars, each holding 3 photos each, from his first month all the way up to his twelfth month.  So here is what I did:

I bought a package of thin wooden boards and 4 wooden stars, both at Michael's.  

I used a hefty amount of Gorilla glue to glue the stars upright on the wooden boards.  Some of them got a little tipsy and I had to lean them up against my kitchen appliances.  (I dream of having a craft room!)

Next I did my spray-painting on my third story balcony on makeshift newspaper.  (And again I dream of having a craft room!)

I don't know why I've been on a glitter kick lately, but I love glitter glue because I can apply it with a brush and it's not clumpy.  Just a nice touch of shimmer and shine.

Then it was time for Mr. Oopsey Daisy to get out his power tools.  He drilled 3 holes in the stars--1 in the very top point and 1 in each of the sides.  This is where I would insert the wire.

 The fun part was twisting the wire!  After experimenting with thin wire, I realized I would need something much more sturdy.  So I got thick wire from Ace--the stuff that really takes some muscle to cut!  After securing the wire in the hole with plenty of hot glue, I twisted the wire into funky shapes.  Every single one was different, but I made sure that the specific loopty-loop I made would hold the photo I had in mind.  (Horizontal and vertical pictures have different centers of gravity.)

Here is the final product!

So at the party, I threw out some gold tinsel-ish stuff (very official name!!) around the stars and stuck in the photos.

I seriously love how it turned out!!  

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