How to Update a Collage Frame

We've owned this basic collage frame for several years. We picked it up on clearance and for such a substantial frame it was a great price.

In the basement of our old home it hung above the couch, sporting photos of long lost relatives strangers.

Before we hung it in this house, I made sure to pick out some special family photos from the last year and edited each of them to black and white. Sometimes I order our family photos in color and other times I stick to B&W.

In general, my rule of thumb is that I'm more likely to choose color over B&W when it's a larger print.

A good example is my son's photo that was in the entryway of our last home. However, in the nursery I chose B&W for the large photos since there were so many other colors in the room -- I wanted the B&W canvases to pop, not blend in. In the case of this collage frame, there would be so many competing colors in all of the photos that I decided that keeping them B&W would let you focus on the faces; which is the most important part anyway!

Along with photos, I grabbed some cardstock in a soft blue and metal robe hooks from the Threshold line at Target.

You'll only see one set of hooks here, but I intend to pick up another set the next time I'm at Target so that there will be four hooks in total. Since there was going to be four hooks, I divided the total length {45 inches} of the frame by five, marked out every 9 inches and then screwed the hooks into the frame.

Instead of filling every opening with a photo, there is card stock in every other slot. It's quick and easy to cut them out with a paper trimmer and then I just used the sheet of stock images as my guide for placing the card stock.

Since this frame will be holding coats and bags, I added two hangers on the back {there were already two} and each is attached to a stud or with an anchor in the wall.

The card stock spots are perfect for leaving notes to each other and reminders.

Plus, it's nice to have a spot to hang some of our more "everyday" photos -- like playing in the snow or taking a hike -- as opposed to only portraits in our home.

The best part of this project is that besides the hooks, it was completely free! And I used something we've had for a while in a new and functional way. It's been a great project to start getting our entryway organized as part of the 8-Week Organizing Challenge. If you are interested in our coat hook tags, head over here for the tutorial.

What have you been working on this week? Have you turned anything that was old into something new and functional?