Photo Slide Curtain

I’m so excited to share this cool project! Grant came to me last week with a jar full of photo slides. He wanted to make something to hang in front of his window, and we came up with an idea inspired by the look of beaded curtains. We hung the photo slides from a dowel and placed them in front of the previously blank window. When the natural light hits the negatives it gives an amazing stained glass look! So pretty! This project is really simple and can be completed in a couple of afternoons. 

 You’ll need a large collection of photo slides, a wooden dowel, a lot of small jump rings, and eye hooks. A pair of needle-nose pliers will be helpful, too.

First measure the width of your window and cut the wooden dowel so that it fits across it. Figure out how many strands you want to hang and screw in that number of eye hooks evenly across the dowel. We did 12 strands.

Using a thumb tack or needle, poke a hole on the top and bottom of each slide. Make sure the hole is in the center and close to the edge of the slide. Connect the slides together with two jump rings. The two jump rings will make each strand twist…but if you want a it to be flat, use one bigger jump ring in between each slide. Now just connect, connect, connect until your fingers go numb. Our strands were 24-slides long and we ended up using 288 slides total. Phew.

This was so much fun! And allowed me two whole afternoons to hang out with Grant…something that I always look forward to. We took a trip to Home Depot, ate 88 cent tacos at Tamale House, and spent hours looking through the slides, which ranged from the 1950s to the 90s. From what we could tell there were photos of a Caribbean cruise, a trip to France, a visit to the zoo, a hunting trip, and beautiful views of San Francisco. There was also a series of red photographs (light damage I’m assuming?) that have a really cool effect when the light hits them. Get your hands on some vintage photo slides and try it out!

xoxo Mary Rose

Welcome.

Hi. I’m Mary Rose! It is the day after my birthday and I am officially late in starting this blog. I had promised myself, and my hypercritical friends, that my “blog launch” would be on my 20^th birthday, but I was too busy eating pancakes and soaking up unnecessary attention to even think about starting my blog…and I’m OK with a 24-hour delay. My idea of starting a blog literally began with me dying my hair red, storming into my roommate’s bedroom, rolling around on her bed, and melodramatically declaring that I was in the midst of a mid-life crisis—or I suppose a quarter-life crisis is more accurate. It just hit me one day that I wasn’t accomplishing all of the things that I wanted to be accomplishing. I am currently an advertising student at the University of Texas at Austin, and although I enjoy school, the things that truly get me excited aren’t found in a classroom. If I let my irresponsible side take over, I would do nothing but drag my friends to vintage boutiques, bake banana bread, sew dresses, and decorate my house with handmade crafts. With stresses from school and work, it is so easy set aside all of the things I want to do in order to accomplish what I have to do. What I need is some balance. Some inspiration. Some motivation. After enduring a month of my friends making fun of me, uttering “Oh, why don’t you blog about it?” after everything I say, I think I’m finally ready to make this thing official. So without further ado, welcome to Retrosepect.