FACT: Derek and I graduated from college four whole years ago, yet neither of has has gotten around to framing our diplomas. Why? Because 1. those fancy pants diploma frames they offer you post graduation are pretty expensive and 2. most diploma frames are a little.. intense. I mean why does a frame need six species of wood encrusted in gold with quadruple matting? Does it make the document look more important? I for one don’t need a fancy pants frame to make my diploma look important because I will never forget pulling all nighters for four years straight, staying up late in studio watching Elf and listening to Delilah on the radio, or having ice cream for breakfast everyday. I value that piece of paper with every fiber in my being, so I think it was safe to give it a more simple frame, that matches our home a little better. Especially considering Derek is about to recieve his Masters.. what a smarty pants! Meaning we’d need THREE crazy expensive frames [shudder].

So we went to Target and picked up three of these bad boys for $16.99 a pop.

We knew that our diplomas were all 11″x14″, and the mat that came with this frame had an opening for 8.5″x11″. So we went to Michael’s and picked up three of these black and white double mats for $7.99 a piece + 20% off each [yay coupons!] bringing it down to about $6 each.

We didn’t want to buy custom mats [hello $$$] so we just chose mats that had the right sized opening and planned to trim down the rest to fit into our 14″x16″ frames.

Our mats were exactly 2″ too wide and high, so I measured off 1″ on all sides and drew four lines for my cuts.

Using a metal straight edge and an xacto knife, I carefully trimmed down my mats. It took about two cuts per side to get through such a thick material.

Then I lined up my diploma with the opening of the mats and voila! It was framed!

This is the only glimpse of the office I’m willing to show right now, because it is a little bit in shambles. But I promise, after we organize it this weekend I’ll post more photos [including Derek's freshly framed diploma :) I still need to reframe my NCIDQ certificate [it's Ikea mat is a little yellow-y compared to my Michaels mat], frame my TBAE certificate once it comes in, and then frame Derek’s Masters diploma! I have no idea why I waited four years because this project took me about 20 minutes and only cost about $23 per document. Which definitely beats $250 per document, yikes! Did anyone else wait this long to frame their diplomas? I hope we aren’t the only underachievers.

Disclaimer: sorry that my posting schedule has been a little out of wack lately, but my mom was in town all last week and we went into wedding mode like you wouldn’t believe. So there haven’t been a whole lot of home-related DIY projects, but TONS of wedding ones. More on that Wednesday! :D