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Hello again friends!
Things have been busy around here and I am trying out new ideas and crafts almost daily. My problem is remembering to take pictures and then posting them to the blog so you can see that I’m not just sitting around eating bon bons and watching soap operas. Are there still soap operas? I know they’re a dying breed. I used to watch “Days of Our Lives” many years ago. Bo and Hope, nuf said.
AAARRRRRGGGGG! Did I really show you a BEFORE photo of my refrigerator? It’s not that bad but has been much, much worse in the past. The front of my fridge is stainless and is not magnetic. The sides are magnetic so I have found myself sticking everything all over the sides. The downside is that you can see this mess directly from my Living Room as well as my Dining Room. I think the messiness of it gave me digestive problems as I would eat dinner. Just a mess. I wasn’t sure what to do to make it look better and go with the rest of the decor in my Kitchen.
Enter “THE FRAME”….
This was an impulse buy for me when I was shopping at Simply Southern Market a few months ago. They always have painted frames and I always want them. This particular frame is very large (like 3’4″ x 1’4″) and very heavy for a frame (I’m guessing 10-15 lbs). I bought it to go in my hallway off of my foyer but it didn’t look right when I tried to hang it there. So, for months this pretty little thang sat in my basement. One day, I brought it up and sat it against the side of my fridge and felt the size was perfect.
I first thought of hanging it on the side of the fridge with magnets as a basic frame to make the area a little more prettier…
Enter “THE CHICKEN WIRE”…
I had sold my friend Toni’s house last month. She had some items from her garage that I have been storing for her and they were sitting under my carport. She graciously said I could use anything there so I graciously did. She had a roll of chicken wire and I decided to try it as the backing for my message board.
Here’s a shout out to my new Digz gloves, too. I was given these at a blog conference in the summer and I was finally able to use them! They really helped when touching the chicken wire. I would definitely wear gloves for this. You can find these at Home Depot for less than $10. I love them!
Here are some of the supplies I used:
Heavy Duty Stapler and Staples
Ceramic Block Magnets (I used 1.875 in L x .875 in W x .375 in Thk)
This was not a task I thought I could handle alone so I asked my dad to help.
Enter “THE DAD”…
Does this stapler make my butt look big?
We started by stapling the chicken wire to the frame at the top and then at the bottom. I used my wire cutters to cut across the designated bottom area so we wouldn’t have that whole roll of wire in our way.
Gently pulling the chicken wire, we stapled the sides. I wish we had an audio of what was going on when these photos were taken. My mom was photographing us (I spared you the photos of the ground and table legs that she took) and the whole thing was just stressful and hilarious at the same time.
OK, yes, the stapler is what’s making me look big in the photos…
Once all of the wire was stapled, we trimmed around the edges and then used a hammer to gently bend the wires down. **Since I was going to glue magnets to the back and hang it on my refrigerator, this is all that I did. If you were to choose to make something similar and hang it directly on a wall or door, I would suggest that you make sure no sharp/rough edges are sticking out that would damage your wall. You could even run a line of felt, fabric, ribbon or tape over the wire just to be cautious.**
Using the E6000 glue, I glued the block magnets to the corners. I did tell you in the beginning that this frame was super-heavy. I ended up using 6 magnets to hold this particular frame up. I could not find magnets for sale that specified how much weight they would hold so it was a trial-and-error kind of thing. I let the glue dry overnight just to be sure.
Enter “THE FINISHED PRODUCT”…
What do you think? Of course, I cannot take credit for the fantastic paint on the frame itself. It was that way when I bought it. My Kitchen walls are red so I decided to go with a mainly neutral color scheme with pops of red. I weaved ribbon in the center area and then hung a red and black bow for some color. I had thought of making something that looked like a window box at the bottom but we walk right by this area a million times a day and thought that maybe we’d run into something sticking out too much. I decided to just stick some greenery at the bottom.
A couple of my favorite quotes are hung with Dollar Tree magnets (the same ones I used for my faux cutting board photo hanger HERE).
I kept my family calendar at the top since that is the most used item we had on the fridge. I downloaded these for free from Julie at My Wee Abode. Click HERE to download your own. (Thanks Julie!)
Everything looks so clean and intentional now. I would like to mention that I did use small, decorative clothes pins to clip some items on the chicken wire. The pineapples were originally black and I painted them so they’d have a more color. One thing I learned from this project is that you cannot rely on the chicken wire to magnetically hold most of the items…I stuck the magnets directly on to the fridge and not the wire.
You could make one of these with any type of frame. Dollar Tree has 8×10 frames that could be painted and several arranged on the fridge. No chicken wire? Use thick floral wire or string that can be stapled or glued to the back tightly…just hang items from it like a clothes line. For me, I took what I had and made it work. Hope you like it!
Thank you again for stopping by! I appreciate you visiting Mulch and Paint!
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