Got any book jackets lying around?

I am a sucker for children's books. When I was in college and working towards my degree in early childhood eduction, I would buy one hard cover children's book a week. I started a great collection for my classroom. Now my children have inherited all of those books. And thankfully, we all love to read.

Over the years I have collected unwanted book jackets. Our favorite books that were bought in hard copy all have these lovely, shiny book jackets. We all know that my boys would rip and tear them. So, I gently took them off and placed them in an ever-growing stack in my craft closet. I am NOT a pack rat, and basically throw out everything without an immediate use. So this little collection might be the only group of things that I have collected over the years with the dream of "using them some day".

Lo and behold, the day came! I decided to frame them for our school room! Here's how I did it:

I wanted a red "matte" around each print. So I bought a roll of solid red wrapping paper at Wal-mart for less than $3.00. I traced the glass from each frame on to the red paper and cut out the shapes. Then I used my paper cutter to cut the book jackets to fit each matte/frame with a small border of red left to show.I used my scrapbooking glue and scotch tape to hold the jackets to the paper. I only had 8 frames and I wanted to frame 11 book jackets.But that's okay because I had three extra wooden frames that I recently took out of our family room. I had a half-empty can of white spray paint that I used to turn the wooden frames into white ones, after three quick coats of paint.

Here's the final product. Can you tell which frames are painted?Some of these book titles bring the warmest memories! That one in the bottom left corner is titled, I Believe in Jesus. I read that with both the boys when they accepted Jesus as their Savior. And The Nutcracker is our absolute favorite Christmas story! And The Polar Express and Verdi (my husband and boys are oddly fascinated with snakes) and The Tale of the Three Trees!! I am so delighted to have these memories lining the main wall in our school room! I will not have time to hang them until next week, so I'll post pictures of the wall then. Won't the bright colors pop off of the robin's egg blue wall color? I can't believe that even me, the non-pack rat, can find materials around the house to create a whole wall of art for $3.00! If I can, anyone can!