Monday Made It: My Diploma Frame & Focal Point

I love the idea of Monday Made It with 4th Grade Frolics, but I've never done one before.  I've been a busy little bee this summer though getting my office overhaul crossed off my "to do" list.  One of the finishing touches was FINALLY hanging up my diploma from, oh, four years ago when I graduated with my Master's.  

I knew I didn't want anything traditional per se.  Not that there's anything wrong with traditional; I just wanted to think outside the box.  I did know that I wanted something to hang my tassel to the right of my diploma.  A few weeks back I blogged about this really cool drawer shelf, and since then I've wanted something drawer-esque somewhere in my house.  That wasn't my plan for the diploma frame, but then I saw this drawer photo frame at Hobby Lobby and fell in love. And it was 50% off!  Even better. 

I can't find the exact frame I bought on the website now, but it's in the same color scheme as this one.  In fact, in the store, it was right by this one where the custom framing stuff is in the back of the store.  This one is restricted to inserting three photos, but the one I bought is completely open for whatever size or combination of elements you want to frame.  

The more I noticed the gold resin letters around the store, the more I wanted to add another element too.  I thought that gold three-dimensional letters to spell UAB on the shelf part would be really eye-catching (plus, green and gold are UAB colors).  I found these metal letters at Hobby Lobby the very next week, and they were half off too!  Not bad because that made them $1.50 each.  I paid another $1 or $2 for the gold paint, and I already had the brushes at home. 

It took about three coats of the metallic paint for me to get it dark enough to cover the metal.  I was still going for that distressed look, so I used paper towels to "distress" the letters as I painted.  This step is important to do when the paint is still wet so you get the desired effect.  The only problem with that is that the paint actually dried really fast!  I did all this in one ten-minute "sit down".  By the time I finished the "B", the "U" was already dry and I started over again.

I used these double-sided mounting circles to "hold" the letters in place on the drawer/shelf and to hold the drawer pull on the glass of the frame.  *Tip:  If you do this yourself, I would take the screw part out of the drawer pull to flatten it more before adhering it to the glass.  I would also wrap the tassel around the pull before adhering it too to keep from messing with it after you have it in the right place.

Here's another little goodie that I made too.  Because I'm working on achieving another goal (which I will eventually frame and hang on my office wall too), I wanted a reminder to keep working toward making that dream a reality.  So I designed this little JPG, printed it with Shutterfly's new 4x4 prints (which I LOVE!), and framed it in this new square frame above my diploma.

I love the final effect, and this was definitely the "finishing touch" my office space needed!