Bamboo Photo Mat/Spray Painting Mats

4.22.2013

Want to do something a little different than a standard photo mat? Check this out!

I'm here to show you how much I've gotten done on the gallery wall. This has wall has been such a trying challenge for me. But I really r-e-a-l-l-y see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I had a spray painting frenzy about a week ago and got about 10 frames painted.

Then the other day I worked on getting all of the pictures in the frames.

For our family picture, I wanted to do something a little different.

While I was down in the basement, grabbing some photo mats, I found some bamboo placements.

I thought they might look cool on the mat. I disassembled it into individual sticks.

I tried using my glue gun, but the glue kept drying to fast. I couldn't place it quick enough, so I cut up the sticks to make the pieces smaller, making a brick like effect.

I just kept going around and around.

Pretty cool and fun to do.

This is what it looked like when I was finished.

Next, I wanted to spray paint it white.

LOVE it!!

I thought it would look nice with our family picture that has an outdoor setting.

I really like the way it looks!

Hubby and I were talking last night about this picture, I believe it was taken in the summer of 2011. That was only 2 years ago, but we all look so different today. It might be time for an update.

While I was putting together the picture and frames, I found some mats that would work, but were the wrong color. Hmmm, my answer? Spray Paint!

They were all sorts of colors. But I figured I had nothing to loose. I wasn't sure how the mat would take the paint. Would it ripple or warp? It seemed to just soak it in. This is after one coat of primer.

I only used cheap flat paint after the one coat of primer. It took a couple of coats, but they came out perfect! See!

Almost finished! I wanted to double mat their graduation portraits, I found some more that would work. Wrong colors again, so I spray painted them black. They came out perfect!