I inherited these empty film reels from my father-in-law (I have boxes full!). At Christmas I decided to try my hand at transforming them into picture frames.
After a basic cleaning, I spay painted one side (and sealed with satin finish), then traced the photo openings onto scrap paper to use as templates. The photos were copied in sepia tone on heavy paper and carefully cut to just larger than the template. Wallpaper samples were used to fill in the extra spaces in the reel. I used a cardboard pizza circle for the backing and glued it all together.
By Carol Overholt from OH
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Love it! So clever.
Thanks! i just came across this on pinterest... I loved making these for family after our dad passed. He was a film enthusiast!
Ingenuis! I love it! Now I am going to go dig out Ma's old Reel to Reels. LOL...
This is Brilliant, something you would find in a high end boutique. Now I have to start searching for film reels.
Absolutely love this look! Thanks for sharing it with us Thrifty Funners!
That's awesome! If you have boxes full, maybe you can sell this. We had a birthday party for my grandmother and displayed pictures of her life. That would have been great to use.
This is beautiful. What a wonderful way to display treasured photos!
Carol, these are wonderful. What a great use of those film reels.
Were you lucky enough to get some film with them. I used to work at a company that converted film to DVD and I could never get enough of the old 8mm or 16mm films. Even if it wasn't your family, the slice of life that the films show was always charming. I also enjoyed seeing local or famous landmarks and how they have changed.
If you don't have old pictures, you can print any regular photos in black and white or sepia to give them an old fashioned look. I had that done with my wedding photo and people asked my mom if it was one of her ancestors :)
I may have to try this myself. Great job!
Oh my gosh, Carol; these are so cool! You are such an artist!
The next time I see one of these in a thrift shop. I am snatching it up just because of you! Brilliant!
Thanks for the kind comments everyone. It was a labor of love as my dear FIL passed away last August. I wanted to preserve some great pics of him in his prime and using the reels was a natural as he collected thousands of them!
Such a neat idea! Wish I hadn't thrown all our 8 mm film reel frames away!
Watch for them at garage sales or thrift stores. You might get lucky!
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