My Tapa Pictures...

Yay!  I'm so excited!  I've had these tapa designs pretty much since Ova and I got married and have never had the chance to use them.  Every time a family member goes to Tonga, I always ask them to bring me back a tapa design...these are the three I have. 

They weren't framed,  I was having a hard time finding frames for them because they are odd shapes, and I didn't want to use them w/out frames because I didn't want them to rip or get damaged....so for the past almost 8 years they've been rolled up in my closet collecting dust.  Well, I'm super excited and dedicated to decorating my new house that I just had to do something about them after all these years.  My grandparents on my mom's side have always been crafty and have always, since I can remember made things for us.  Anything they gave as gifts was homemade and handmade especially by them.  I mean anything, from clothes to food to toys....it was all hand-made.  They made little rocking-horses for all the grandkids when Makai was about one year old.  My grampa cut them out and my gramma painted them white.  I remember she was so ashamed of them because you could tell how shaky her hand was while she painted them.  That was the last thing my gramma gave us.  She passed away not long after that.  I miss her a lot, but I have tons and tons of homemade things that she gave me that help me to remember her.  My boys were playing with the little white rocking horse the other day and I remembered that my grampa has the wood cutting machine.... so I went down and we made some homemade picture frames from some of the scraps of wood he had laying around his garage.  I didn't realize how much stuff he had, like tools and stuff...he had everything you would ever need to build anything.  We measured the wood, cut it with his saw, nailed it together with his air pressured nail gun, he sanded the entire thing for me and all I had left to do was to paint it.  I obviously didn't have glass for it, so I just thumb tacked the picture to the frame....and ta-da, they look amazing!  I'm so grateful for my grampa's handy work and that I finally get to use these in my home!

The finished frames...

Before and After pictures...