Framed Cocktail Silverware

I was thrifting with a friend a few months back when I came upon a couple of narrow frames. They were $1.91/each and the store was advertising a “Huge 50% off” Sale. I was all excited to only pay a buck for each of my treasures. Apparently what the sign really meant, though, was 50% off of everything except what I was trying to purchase. I’m only slightly bitter annoyed about that. 

The sales clerk assures me that I still got a "great deal" because they’d just marked it down from $4.94. Whatevs. If you’re going to put up a sign that takes up your entire store front, I'm thinkin' there’s plenty of room for a disclaimer or two. I’m just saying, is all. Again, still not bitter, but it just goes to show just how "frugal" I am.

Take a look at the frame:

The water color is actually kind of cute. I was going to use it in another project, but a freak Christmas bulb painting accident involving red paint ended that option. I ended up Mod Podging right over the original print. 

I bought this frame with another project in mind, but one day when I opened my silverware drawer  I spied some heirloom cocktail silverware that’s been in the back of drawer for the past few years. I had a Eureka! moment that had me switchin’ gears, toot sweet.

I guess it was only a partial vision of inspiration because not long after I spray-painted the frame in some lovely Oil-Rubbed Bronze (ORB), I had another Eureka! moment. This one involved Wall Fix and cake decorating tools and you can read about my Embossing Technique using the Piping Style by clicking on the picture. I won’t go into the details since it’s on the other post, but this is how the frame turned out.

I tried to mimic the pattern from the vintage silverware onto the frame. I wish this embossing method would have let me show more detailed, but I do think they ended up going together quite nicely.

The silverware really should be called “Yellow-ware” or “Not-Quite-Gold-ware” since there’s a definite yellowish color to it. For some reason the spoons are more yellowed than the forks.

I found some scrapbook paper that I thought looked nice with the silverware and that really helped show them to their best advantage. It's just a little bit of bling, without being too flashy. I bought the paper from JoAnn’s scrapbook paper section. It was with the wedding papers. It has a little cluster of glass beads glued onto the off-white paper. The picture above shows a truer color of the silverware, while the picture just below shows a truer color of the paper. Weird.

For this project, I also got brave and broke out the Gorilla Super Glue to attach the silverware to the scrapbook paper. My challenges with Gorilla’s Super Glue have been well documented (see here and here) but I only had one very brief mishap of gluing my fingers together this go round.

To be honest, I didn’t expect the glue to hold the silverware onto the paper like it has. Because of the arch in the utensils, they are only glued on at the very end of the handle and at the back of the spoon and fork where it rests against the paper, as illustrated above. I didn’t think that was going to give it enough “grip-tion” as my boys like to say. 

Bravo, Gorilla. It’s reasons like this that I keep coming back to you, despite your attempts to glue my various body parts together.

In the end, here’s what the whole thing looks like (see? Yellowed silverware, white paper):

I have this in my dining room on a shadow box Hubs made for me several years ago out of an old window from our first Ohio home. The handprints in the frame are Daja (right), Buddy (left) and Kiddo (center) from two separate years. I have one from Man Child, too, but it’s a different style so it wasn’t framed with the other kid’s prints. Hubs and the kids made these for me for different Mother’s Day gifts. The pictures on the shelf are of Man Child and the Daja eating things, which amuses me to have in the dining room. 

Again, I feel compelled to apologize for the photo quality. Cell phones can only do so much.

 

Cost Breakdown:

Vintage Cocktail Silverware – Free (an “inheritance”)

Scrapbook Paper - $1.99

Frame - $1.91

Mod Podge, Embossing materials, paint – Stock on Hand

Total Project Cost - $3.90

Total Project Time – About 3 hours, (but only because of drying time for paint, embossing and Mod Podge, plus a few indecisive moments about silverware layout)

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