Vintage Photo Holder

This is one of my favorite projects.  I made it while I was visiting my good friend Judy in Arizona a few weeks ago.   So easy, so inexpensive and so much fun! Check it out:

Judy found one of those funky wire photo holders that held about 10 pictures at the Good Will store for a couple of dollars.  With some heavy wire cutters, we snipped off all of the wire photo holders and several new projects were born.  I'm going to show you how I did this one.  Here's what you need:

The first thing I did was make a base for the wire holder.  I found these small frosted glass taper candle holders at Tuesday Morning for $1.99 a pair. (I bought several pairs because I have a lot of the wire holders.)

I took some clay and made a little ball and pressed it into the hole where the candle goes.

Then I made a center hole by just poking the wire holder down into it.  At this point, you can go ahead and bake it, according to the package directions on your clay, right in the holder or just let it air dry.  I've done both and either works.  I didn't love the look of the exposed clay at the base so I took some of my E-6000 adhesive (love that stuff!) and fastened a single hole button right over the top of the clay.

Now it's time to make the little beads that hang from that little loop on the circle part of the wire.  This was the fun part for me.  I wanted to do pearls because I had a wedding photo holder in mind.  Here's what I used:

You can see my finished strand right there in the center of the above picture.  Don't you love those pearl beads?  They just seem to glow!  Now I wanted to add a little charm and I picked up a package of 6 at Michael's.  I can't remember how much they were, but I know they weren't much and I promise you I had a coupon!  Each one said something different, but I chose "Love" for this project.  Here is a close-up of the top loop: 

My In-laws were coming for dinner last night and I asked my sainted Mother-In-Law if she would please bring me one of their wedding pictures.  She's a gem! She brought me 2 that she scanned in and then made them in different sizes so that I had some great choices.  Can I just take a quick moment here to say how awesome I think it is that both my Mother-In-Law and my Father-In-Law are Internet and tech-savvy?!   Back to the project.  Here is a close-up of the finished photo holder, complete with a beautiful photo:

Aren't my In-laws just darling?  They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago.  We had a party and it was so much fun!  We should all be so lucky to have the kind of "happily ever after" that they are enjoying!  I love them both and I'm glad we're neighbors!

Linking Up:

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