[SS Wedding Week] DIY Wedding: Window Pane Photo Frame

Hello from Atlanta, and welcome to Starr Struck Wedding Week! Can you believe that it's here? I can't!  I spent the entire weekend immersed in wedding planning to-dos (except for sneaking away to do yoga + visit with my parents and grandparents), and am so excited about all of the fun crafty projects that we were able to get done :)

I'll be spending all day today finishing up many of these items, but first, wanted to share a fun and easy DIY wedding display that I made yesterday. The great thing about this project is that it's wonderful for weddings, but it is equally wonderful for creating a new photo display to hang in your home. Ben and I will definitely be hanging ours once the wedding is over...


Window Pane Photo Frame/Collage

Step 1. Buy an old window frame. I found mine at a junk shop (literally, TOTAL junk shop--craziest thing I've ever seen!) in Atlanta. You can also buy them at the hardware store, but they won't be as funky/vintage-looking. 

Step 2. Gather up old family pictures of both you and your significant other (or the people that you're making the display for--it's a great gift idea!). I had our grandparents give us pictures from their weddings (amazing!) and collected other old vintage family photos, as well. While searching, I came across this fabulous picture of me and my brother, Peter (hehe!):

Step 3.  Make black & white photocopies of all of your pictures. You can get fancier than this (get them printed with a tint, get real photo copies made, etc.), but this is the easiest/cheapest way to get it done--just make sure your copier is set to "photo" setting. When doing this you can blow up certain pictures, crop, and make some pictures smaller than their originals, in order to fit everything you want into each window pane...

Step 4. Cut out all of your pictures and start playing with layout. I tried a lot of different "compositions" before I settled on the final order of all of the pictures (you can see some finalized panes in the image to the right). 

Step 5. Once you've finalized your layout, measure your window panes and cut pieces of card stock down to that size. I purchased colored card stock, but you can do this however you would like. Once you've cut the pieces down to size, move your image layout from the pane of glass to the card stock. Then glue each picture down using a glue stick (wet glue will make the paper rumple, so try to use a stick!).

Step 6. Once you've completed all of the collages on your card stock, place the paper in the panes (be sure you're doing it in the correct order!) and then use white duct tape to tape the paper into the panes. 

Step 7. Turn it over and voila, you have your very own window pane collage/frame! 
*See optional step below...*

Step 7. (Optional) Use a thin-tipped white paint pen to write in comments/label pictures for guests. For instance, I labeled our grandparents, noted who the babies were in each pic, and labeled cousins + friends people might not recognize right away. I thought this added a fun DIY touch and will help people know who is pictured in some of the older images!

So simple, isn't it? As you can probably tell, this kind of stuff is right up my alley and I have a lot of fun doing it ;) 

Here are a few more fun pics from the past few days...

Gift bags ready to go!

Sampling of some of the flowers that the florist will be using for our arrangements :) I'm in love.

Isn't it all simply loverly? I'm trying to soak up every moment, as I know the big day will be here and then gone before I know it...

Back to wedding-ing!

Namaste,
Mary Catherine