Western General Store

Old wood from old barns and buildings, which included red and white oak, was used for the cabinetry in our kitchen remodel. This wood is dense, heavy and very strong. The kitchen crew rebuilt some of our cabinet doors, so in this project I'm using the cabinet door reject scraps. Since the cabinet door frames had this groove on it for panels, I thought it would be perfect for making picture frames or mirrors. I cut off half of the groove on the table saw to create a place for a picture or mirror. I cut the boards to make a 16" x 20" opening. The outside dimension of the finished frame is 20" x 24". My plan was a rustic looking turquoise color and add large 2 1/4" conchos to the corners and center 3 3/4" silver clavos on each side. I glued it together and nailed it with a brad nail gun on the edges at the corners and used a staple gun on the back corners. This would look good with a coat of polyurethane, but I wanted to ...

I've always wanted to make western style mirrors. I bought a couple of mirrors from the craft store, one 12"x 12" and the other 10" round. I used the weathered wood frame from the Clocks blog. Since I used epoxy to 'glue' in the tile, it took a while to get it out and clean it up. I had to rout out a little wider for the mirror since it was larger. I cut strips of leather 1" wide and attached with Star Tacks . My husband's industrial strength glue gun worked nicely for mounting the mirror in the frame. A different idea would be to attach hair on cowhide pieces to the corners with upholstery nails and add barbed wire on the sides. Now for a lariat mirror. I took a lariat and wound it tight to fit around the 10" mirror. I first taped it together  so I could wrap leather lace on each side. Then I attached leather laced conchos. I cut a piece of plywood on the scroll saw a little smaller than the lariat and glued the mirror onto it....

This is an easy project to make a rustic western rope frame. I cut 4 pieces of rope, 2 1/2" longer than the frame on each side. I cut 4 pieces of rope to fit on the inside of frame. I attached the rope with a brad gun but you could probably use hot glue, then I unraveled the ends of the ropes and glued Mini Star Nails at each corner.