Although we always focus on using picture frames for displaying your favorite photos, there are lots of fun things we can do with picture frames.

One of my favorite practical frame projects is making a cork trivet. If you don’t know what a trivet is, they’re used on tables to set hot dishes on. Since cork is a great insulator, it’s a perfect material for creating a trivet. To make a cork trivet, you first need a lot of corks, a square picture frame with a flat molding, super glue (or other strong adhesive), thick cardboard with 4 tiny brad nails (or a flat frame back), felt squares.

Unless you drink a lot of wine, the best way to get a lot of corks is to ask all of your family members to start saving their corks. That’s what I did and in a month or two I had enough for the trivet.

I am certainly not a cork trivet expert, but here are some basic steps to making a framed cork trivet.

1) For my cork trivet, I used a square solid wood 12×12 picture frame with a simple wood molding. For the frame I used, it had an easel back stand, so I had to remove the regular frame back and had to replace it with a thick cardboard. In order to get the cardboard to stay in the frame, you will have to use four tiny brad nails on the back sides of the frame. The small brad nails will push into the wood frame so your cardboard will be secure.

2) Once the frame back is secure, turn the frame over so the face of the frame is sitting upward. Then begin to position your corks in the frame. You can put them all in one direction or create a pattern. And make sure to have plenty of extra corks, because I found that there are many different sizes of corks, so you sometimes have to get creative for them to all properly fit together.

3) Once you have the pattern you like, begin removing a single cork at a time and apply glue to one side of the cork. Keep doing that until all your corks are glued down.

4) Let the corks sit overnight so they can properly dry. Once they’re dry, you can choose to put adhesive felt squares (or circles) on the back of the frame to prevent the back of your frame from scratching your table.

Enjoy having fun with your picture frames. And, if you have a fun frame idea be sure to let us know!

Picture frames, just like anything in your house is eventually going to need to be cleaned. Dust just has a way of finding it’s way into all kinds of places in your home.

Take a look at this black picture frame…it’s screaming to be cleaned.

However, sometimes frames can fool you into thinking they’re really dirty when in fact it’s just their finish.

Case in point, here is a 70+ year old hand carved picture frame that looks filthy. All around the carved ornamentation there is a light gray brown haze. It looks like this wood picture frame hasn’t been cared for in years, but it’s actually the finish designed to look old.

So, before you get out the dust cleaner, keep these few tips in mind.

Generally, if the frame is old, or has a painted antique finish, you should use extra caution when cleaning your frame. For any frame with an antique finish, a metal finish or an unfinished wood finish, only use a slightly damp cloth to clean your frames. I would not suggest using a liquid dust cleaner on these types of frames, otherwise you could run the chance of damaging your frame.

If you’re trying to clean a frame with a lot of crevices, use a cotton q-tip and slightly moisten it with water. This way you can get to the little cracks and crevices  that most dusting won’t get.

On my own frames, I only use a slightly moistened towel with water. This is enough to pick up the dust and give your frame a clean new look.  Another important step you should take in cleaning your frames is to remove the glass and wipe it down with glass cleaner. Just remember not to put the glass back until it is 100% dry otherwise, you could ruin your picture by having it adhere to the glass.

With just a few minutes of cleaning, your picture frames will keep looking good for years of enjoyment.

Well, it’s finally the time to announce the winner of our $500 Picture Frame Affiliate Contest.

But first, we’d like to thank all of our affiliates for their continued support and participation in our program. Thank You!

Drum roll, please…….and the winner is… Silvana Feldman.

Thanks again to all of our affiliates for their continued help in promoting and referring business to YourPictureFrames.com!

We’re happy to announce that our new mobile picture frame website is finally here!

For those of you who may not know what a “mobile” site is- it’s essentially a website designed for mobile phone users that has a URL that ends in “.mobi”. This allows mobile users to be able to view our website easily and shop for frames from their mobile devices. A mobile site (.mobi) is different than a traditional “.com” site because it’s designed for a small screen size. Because of the small screen size, we designed our mobi site to have more simple navigation and a smaller selection of frames compared to our YourPictureFrames.com site.

And if you’re wondering if you can ONLY view a mobile website on a mobile device? No, you can also view mobi sites on a PC or Mac as well as a mobile device. But, you’ll find that the size of the mobi website is rougly the size of a phone so it makes viewing on your computer monitor not very good.

So, get on your mobile phone (or desktop computer if you want) and check it out at www.YourPictureFrames.mobi and let us know what you think. We ‘d love to hear your feedback

We tried to make it easy to use and give you helpful information to make buying frames fun and convenient.  On our mobile site we have information about our online store, frequently asked questions (FAQs), contact information and a selection of frames to browse.  We have a selection of Top 10 Favorites Frames that regularly changes as well as special clearance deals. Right now, you can’t order frames on our Mobile site, however we hope to offer that functionality in the future.

In celebration of the launch of YourPictureFrames.mobi site we will be offering a special  mobile coupon available by visiting our mobile site. And if you want to hear about our monthly frame deals and specials, you can text he word “frames” to the number “69302.” This will give you access to our exclusive YPF Mobile Frame Club which offers a once a month SMS text message.

Come join us by texting the word frames to the number 69302 so you won’t miss out on our YPF Mobile Frame Club deals.