Thursday, November 8, 2012

Let's Recycle an Old Picture (in Excruciating Detail)

In June I took an old, sun-bleached picture we had, and reused the frame to hold a poster-sized print of one of the photos I took last May. For some reason, I documented the process with my digital camera, so I guess we're doing that now. :D



Here we have the picture in question. My grandparents used to have it over their fireplace. I'm not sure exactly when they got it, but it's got to be at least twenty years old. As you can see it wasn't looking too hot.





Flipping it over you can see the tape's gotten pretty yellow too. It's going to have to come off so I can dismantle it.



The next thing I needed to get out of the way was the board behind the picture itself. Unfortunately, there were complications here. The board was kept on by these metal pins embedded in the frame. Some I managed to bend back successfully, others snapped off, taking small chunks of the frame with them. Whoops.



Inside was the picture, attached to a card mount with only a single bit of tape. Cheapskates.



After carefully pealing the tape away from the mount, I was able to get a good look at the print itself for the first time.



You can get a good idea of just how much it's faded over the years here.



Right. With the old picture out, it's time to put my own one in. Several minutes and numerous measurements later though, I realised the print I ordered is far too big the size of the frame. Welp, back to Snapfish I guess. :D




A week and a half and a new print later and I'm finally ready to continue.



The print in question. It's looks slightly less detailed than I was hoping for blown up, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out overall.



Time for some new tape.



And a quick check to make sure the photo isn't crooked.



Moar tape!



Looking pretty good.



Finally, it's time to put things back together. You can see from the bits chipped out of the side of the frame that I've managed to knock out several more pins while I've been doing this. Nice going, JiliK.



After putting the backing board back in and bending the few remaining pins back into position, I make a super-sloppy job of applying some new tape to the back.



At last, my masterpiece is on the wall for all to bask in its splendour. :D  A pretty cool way to re-purpose the old frame. I do wish I measured everything a bit more carefully to begin with though. :D

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