Another pinterest inspired item - lead hangers

... as in somewhere to hang the dogs' leads.

I found this picture about 100 years ago and had filed it away for a must-do project:

original pin:  thesaturdaymorningsblog.com/

I even searched Spotlight and a few other shops for these large papier mache type letters, all to no avail.  I could get thin wooden ones (barely thick enough for a nail, let alone a cup hook) or small papier mache ones, but nothing as big as you see above.  So I filed the idea away and focused on moving into this house (yes it was that long ago!)

Upon unpacking boxes (ahem .. 12 months after moving into the 'new' house), I came across a whole lot of picture frames I had accumulated from my time working at Rabbit Photo.  I was going to pass them on to the Salvos as they didn't fit with the 'look' I wanted for this house when I realised that they were actually quite thick and real wood.  Thick enough to screw in some cup hooks and real-wood-enough to last for a while ...

So I took the glass out and sprayed the kind-of-oak-coloured frames with some spare gloss black paint and, while they were drying, set myself to the task of individualising them.

Despite my handy (huge) stash of scrapping paper, I couldn't find a single paper I liked enough to put in the frames, so I just had to go to Scrapbooking Secrets in Maddington to find some inspiration.  I was looking for something with paw prints on it but couldn't find a single piece of paper with paw prints ... oh the horror!!

I did, however, find some paper that looked like an old wooden fence so that got the brain ticking over ... maybe I could put a picture of each dog on a faux backyard in the frames.  Bought the fence paper, came home and spent hours searching for just the right photo of each dog, once again to no avail.

At this point, the males of the household were whining about something to do with there being no food and being absolutely staaaaarving so I left the craft room in disgust (both at myself and them for not being able to make themselves a sandwich or something) and went to cook dinner.

When I came back after threatening them all with dismemberment if they didn't do the dishes right now a lovely peaceful family dinner, I decided to use my craft room's white elephant:  my Cricut.  I have the ZooBalloo cartridge and after playing around for a while, came up with these:

Xena's ... obviously!

Can you guess who this is for???

And this is both of them hanging in a silly little space between two door frames in the entry:

I ended up fitting two hooks to each frame; one for the harness and one for the lead/leash.  It is just so much easier than trying to dig through everything that gets dumped in the storeroom (to the left of the frames) to try and find their harnesses and leads.  It has made it easier for the dogs too ... all they have to do is bark then go sit in the entry looking up at the frames to give us the idea that it might be time to go for a W.A.L.K. (or as it is referred to in our house, "an ambulate around the perimeter of the neighbourhood" as the dogs have cottoned on to the word 'walk' and even the spelling of it!)

The frames/holders have been hanging up for over a year now and still look good.  The gloss paint stands up to any inadvertent bumps/scratches and the cup hooks haven't needed to be replaced.  The only issue is that the hooks need to be turned to one side or the other as they make the frame sit too far out from the wall if they are straight but I have (finally) learned to live with that part.

Not bad for the price of a couple of bits of scrapbooking paper (I had everything else in the house/garage).