A dog and his boy

Recently, I ran across a quote that I knew I had to remember. It is a simple concept, and one very true in my house:

"Every dog needs a boy." 

This quote inspired me to re-vamp a picture frame that I have hanging next to the back door. The frame has three hooks and it has been used as a convenient place to hang the dog's leash.  All this time, I only had one photo of the dog gazing out at a pasture of cows, but I had never put anything in the two spots flanking that photo.  To say that this looked extremely tacky is putting it mildly, unless seeing the heads of the screws on the backboard of the frame is considered art.

I decided that this would make for a simple project that is both practical and thought provoking. I'll bet some of you have similar inspiration in your house too!

Before I get into the step-by-step, I want to say something about the photo, here's what I have in the frame now:

At the time, these two stared out the front window often. 

Photo tip:  There is a trick to photographing subjects that are "back-lit".  Your camera, on an automatic setting, will want to meter off of main light source - which is coming from outside in this case - and will underexpose your subjects.  If you have a simple point-and-shoot camera, the best thing you can do is make sure that your flash is on and fires when you take the photo. That way, your subjects will be properly exposed and the background will end up slightly over-exposed, which is fine. 

If you have a manual setting on your camera, or an SLR camera, set the Tv (shutter speed priority setting) to 1/100 second and pop your flash, so that it fires as well.  This does the trick! 

You would kick yourself if you missed this kind of "Kodak" moment when it presented itself, so practice taking pictures of your kids, pets, anyone who is willing, with the window directly behind them. (In daylight of course, it won't work the same at night!)

After I found this quote, I knew what to do with those two empty openings. I split the quote in half, hand-writing one half on one piece of textured scrapbook paper and the other half on the opposite piece using a thin-tip black marker.

Now onto the frame. Here is the super-simple photo tutorial:

Textured scrapbook paper. (Paper cutters are a life saver!)

Paper alone was too bland, so I found some thin ribbon
and added it to the bottom of both pieces of  paper.

I simply attached it on the back side with transparent tape.

"Every dog needs a boy."

There you have it!  I can't believe I hadn't thought of this sooner, but I think it was one of things that required a little bit of inspiration to come up with the perfect use for something that I already had. 

Here's to inspiration!