As the weather heats up and kids get out of school, many of us will be looking for our next great vacation destination. Along with that comes lots of memories we’d like to hold on to. Here are some great ways to preserve your summer memories and display them so that you can keep them at the forefront of your mind all year round.

Create a Collage

If you take more photos than you have any idea what to do with during your summer adventures, you might consider putting together a collage, either in a specially designed collage frame or just by sticking multiple photos in a pleasing order in a large frame. These are a great way to showcase exciting multi-faceted events and vacations out in the open so you can reminisce more often.

Frame More than Pictures

You’re absolutely not limited to just photographs when it comes to keeping your summer memories alive. If you plan to take a road trip, print out a map of the ground you’ll cover and add points of interest on it for all the stops you made along the way. Frame ticket stubs or programs from fun events.

Don’t Exclude Natural Elements

If your vacation involves a lot of outdoor activities, collect some beautiful pieces of nature like seashells, driftwood, greens or flowers that you can dry, or pretty rocks and include those things in your display. Shadowbox frames are a great way to put together 3D items like these for display. Just be sure you’re not taking anything you shouldn’t from nature!

Where ever you choose to vacation and however you choose to preserve your summer memories, make sure you’re living in the moment first and foremost. For more ideas that can help keep your vacation alive all year long, check out the Frame Warehouse Facebook page.

If your family is anything like the average American family, you likely have a lot going on. There are sports practices and games, school events, and appointments that can easily get lost in the madness that is our crazy lives.

One of the simplest ways to make sure that everyone stays well informed of what events you have coming up, plus lots of other organizational items your family needs to keep track of, is with a comprehensive family calendar. You can make a personalized calendar that can help you track all the items your family needs to keep up on by using a large frame, some simple printouts or hand-drawn elements. You can use a dry erase marker to write in dates and other pertinent items.

Start with a Frame

You’ll want to start with a large frame that suits your décor so that your calendar can have a positive impact on your homes aesthetics rather than detracting from them.

Elements You May Want to Include in Your Calendar

What you add to your calendar besides a basic calendar that you write in your family’s events on will depend on your individual family. Here are some elements you may consider:

• Chore chart
• Meal plan
• Grocery list
• Detailed weekly outlook
• To-do lists
• Cleaning schedule

You can cover the backing of the frame with attractive paper and stick down each element where ever you’d like so that it works best for your family. Consider using different colored markers for each family member’s activities so that it’s easy to differentiate at a glance.

There are lots of organizational uses for frames. To find more ways to turn frames into family logistics tools, follow along on the Frame Warehouse Facebook page.

Framed décor is a great way to add pizazz to your home and you can change it in and out as you please easily so that your home’s look can flex with the season and your mood.

While it’s obvious that framed items cover a wide range of styles, there are almost as many unique ways to hang frames as there are unique framed items. Here are just a few ideas for how to hang frames that in your home to turn your boring framed pieces into whole new works of art.

1. Hang several frames from a curtain rod- Hang a sturdy, stylish curtain rod on your wall, then hang framed pieces from it by stapling ribbons to the top and back of the frame on either side and tying a bow around the curtain rod.

2. Hang with unique materials- Screw simple eyelet screws into the top corners of a nice, heavy wood frame and you can use almost any string-like material you like to hang your frame. Get creative. You can use jute, ribbon, strips of fabric, beaded strands of wire, or anything else you can come up with that can hold the weight of your item.

3. Hang photos from knobs- Using the above eyelets or by simply attaching strings to the back of a frame using a heavy duty adhesive or staples, you can hang photos from knobs or drawer pulls. They don’t necessarily need to be knobs on cabinets, either. You can hang a classy knob anywhere on your wall to add a unique touch to your framed item.

4. Add trim slightly above eye level and hang frames from hooks- This is a great way to create a unique gallery wall that you can design to suit your space and your style.

Your only limits for how you hang your frames are your imagination and the strength of materials you choose. For more unique framing and frame décor ideas, check out the Frame Warehouse Facebook page.

While we live in a melting pot, there’s a lot to be said for remembering your heritage and being proud of it. During the month of March, St. Patrick’s Day often brings out the Irish in almost everyone, but that could be in large part because the modern trappings of the holiday are so much fun, regardless of ancestry. 

Aside from celebrating holidays in honor of our heritage, there are lots of things we can do to bring our heritage into our homes year-round. Here’s our step-by-step guide to celebrating your heritage. 

1. Find out for sure where your family hails from. Oftentimes, people don’t have a clue where their ancestors dwelled, but even if you do have a good idea, the results might surprise you. Check out a DNA service like Ancestry or 23 and Me to nail down your origins.
2. Learn about your heritage. Find scholarly books about your heritage or watch a documentary that explains more about it. You may find traditions or décor that you’d like to bring into your home to celebrate where you come from. It’s also a lot of fun to teach kiddos about their ancestry as long as you find an activity or interesting facet that will hold their attention well.
3. Celebrate holidays authentically. Do your best to emulate the actual traditions of your family’s homeland rather than the less accurate versions often celebrated in America. For instance, here’s a guide to celebrating an authentic St. Patrick’s Day.
4. Add your heritage into your décor. Frame photos of your ancestors, cultural symbols, sheet music of the songs of your heritage, or photographs of your ancestral lands.

By doing any of these things, you can help to keep your heritage alive and establish its traditions in your family here at home. For more ideas on how to frame your family’s heritage, check out the Frame Warehouse Facebook page. 

Life seems to move faster these days that it did once. This means that, for many people who feel like it would be very easy to become disconnected from our history in the current climate, it’s important to take extra special care to preserve family traditions.

This means passing those traditions on to the next generation by practicing them with our younger family members and relaying their significance to our heritage. Whether it’s a cultural tradition or simply one that your family has cultivated, placing reminders of those traditions out where they’re on display can also be a great way to perpetuate them. Here’s an idea for how to preserve those traditions.

Frame them!

You can hang a photo collage depicting decorating grandpa every year with the ribbons, bows, and pretty paper from holiday unwrapping. Maybe it will inspire the next generation to make the next papa a pretty present every year, too.

Frame your great grandmother’s special, positively famous apple pie recipe and give it a place of pride on your kitchen counter so that you never forget to make it at Thanksgiving, or you can hang it on the wall and hang her signature rolling pin underneath it.

Take the beautiful, handmade doily your great aunt always set out at Easter and place it in a frame with a beautifully contrasting background to showcase it each spring.

These small touches will add warmth to your home and will help you pass down the traditions that make your family who they are. If you need more ideas for framing with a personal touch, check out the Frame Warehouse Facebook page and follow along so you don’t miss anything!

Before we know it, winter will be upon us. We here at Frame Warehouse always looking for clever ways to use frames, and the beauty of the last season provides us with a new inspiration. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, or no holiday at all, there is beauty to be found in the depths of winter which you can reflect in your interior décor. Here’s a list of ideas for using frames in your winter décor.

1. Printables: There are awesome free printables available for every holiday and every style. Find a couple favorites, print them off on high-quality paper, and hang them up to bring winter cheer!
2. Frame wintery knitwear: Especially in cooler climates, cold-weather knitwear often takes on family heirloom status, particularly hand knit or crochet pieces. Press pretty sweaters, hats, or gloves that won’t be worn and hang it up for a nostalgic touch.
3. Frame paper snowflakes: These iconic crafts are great on a dark background and can be glammed up with a little glitter.
4. Make a dry-erase holiday countdown board: Glass makes a great surface for dry-erase markers, so simply slip a calendar sheet into a frame and mark down the days to your special celebration.
5. Family photos of snowy fun: Get these happiness-spreading photos out of albums and up on your walls for the cold months.
6. Wintery landscapes printed off from free stock photo sites: There is a plethora of winter landscapes you can frame available on the internet for free. Check out sites like StockSnap to find the right pics for your space.
7. Doilies reminiscent of snowflakes: Like heirloom knitwear, but more intentionally decorative.
8. Holiday recipes: Hang your favorite recipes on the wall with a pretty mat for a warm, personal touch.
9. Dried evergreens: Press evergreen boughs in books, then arrange in a frame. It brings the outdoors in when out isn’t very hospitable.
10. Mirrors: Hang plenty of framed mirrors to reflect holiday lights!

The only limit to framed holiday décor possibilities is your imagination! For more framing ideas, follow our Facebook page, and tell us how you’re using frames in your holiday décor this year!

Traditional framed art can seem a little stuffy for most kid’s room designs. However, with a couple tweaks plus some unique display ideas, you can use frames to make your kid’s bedroom into their dream space. Here’s a list of ideas for using frames to make your child’s room cooler than cool:

• Building brick display case– Glue 4×4 building bricks (ideally not the thinner ones so that you’ve got plenty of surface area to stick down) to a tough backing, then place the backing in a frame. Your child can use those bricks to display their favorite building brick figures, or you can even set it up to display large, flat works.
• Vertical building brick platform– New sticky building brick bases can be framed, hung, and used as a vertical platform for building block creations. It’s fun, interactive, changeable, and visually stimulating for your kiddo.
• Artwork gallery– Add a heavy-duty clip to the top of a few covered frame backs, hang, and then instruct your child to clip up the artwork they’re most proud of.
• Use printables as art– Kids’ interests change from day to day sometimes. Use free printables so that the artwork in their room can always reflect their current obsession.
• Make a photo board– Framing photos of friends and family might seem a little too adult-y for some kids. Instead, glue fabric over a frame back, then add ribbons to hold photos, and print off photos so your child can stick them up as they see fit.

Many of these ideas also work great in pediatrician’s offices or other kid-centered businesses. There are plenty of different styles of Frame Warehouse frames to suit every child’s individual tastes. Check in on our Facebook page for more ideas for using frames to decorate your whole home.