Vintage Photo Holders

If you know me personally, or have checked out my about page, you know that I keep everything.  Everything.  If you wrote me a note in middle school, I probably still have it.  I come from a long line of I’m-going-to-keep-this-because-I-might-need-it-one-day kind of people, so, when my Grandmother passed away, my Mom kept all of her stuff.  When Grandpa passed away, Mom kept all of his stuff. When my Mom passed away, I kept all of her stuff.  Which means I got her stuff, Granny’s stuff and Grandpa’s stuff.  That’s literally a ton of stuff.   

When I came across my Grandmother’s old spools of thread in my Mom’s crafting room, they charmed me instantly and I knew they were “keepers”.  Mom passed away five months before our wedding and we had already been planning a vintage style, DIY shindig, but Mom’s passing put a lot of things in perspective and really inspired me to create a wedding that was very personal and full of love.  I wanted each and every person there to feel the love. Like, before they hit the whiskey bar.  Adding vintage pics of family seemed like the perfect touch, but  I couldn’t just scatter them all over the tables – BOOM – idea:  photo holders made from my Granny’s old thread spools.

This is so easy.  You can turn almost anything into a photo holder; apples, cupcakes, pie…  for some reason I can’t think of anything not edible, but you get the idea.  Here we go:

Using some needle nose pliers, cut a length of sturdy wire about 3 inches longer than your desired finished length. The wire I have on hand is rusty, ignore that.  If you don’t have any wire, a wire coat hanger would also work.

 Grab the wire about 1/3 of the way up with your pliers.

 Wrap the wire around the pliers a couple times.

Straighten the wire above and below the little curly-q.

 Wrap the other end of the wire around something that is about the size of a marker or pen.  Wrap it around at least twice.

 Trim the tail as close as you can…

 …and then use your pliers to pinch that extra tail into the circle.

 Adjust and straighten.

If you are using something that has a hole in the bottom of it, like a spool of thread, make sure you put a piece of tape over the bottom hole.  (heh, she said bottom-hole)

 Put a small amount of hot glue in the other side…

 …and put your wire in the hole.

 Trim if necessary.  The little curly-q at the bottom keeps the wire from leaning and the tape on the bottom keeps the glue from seeping through and making this a semi-permanent fixture on your table.

 Slide a pic in between the circled up wires.  Done!

 I used these little charmers to create small vignettes that included candles, wildflowers, lace, burlap, my grandfather’s old keys, as well as a ton of old bottles that I dug up on my family’s land in Texas and some thrift store finds.

 Dreamy.

Are you into the vintage trend?