I decided to make a picture frame for the dog pictures. I considered a shape like a pawprint, but settled on a dog bone shape.
01 printouts.jpg
I searched for ‘clip art dog bone’ and saved a jpeg. I cropped all the white space out and then adjusted the size. My piece of wood is 8.25” wide so I adjusted to that dimension. The paper on the right is enlarged proportionally but I didn’t think it was long enough. Normally when resizing a picture you want to do it proportionally, but I don’t think it matters in this case, so I left the height at 8.25” and stretched the length to 17.5”. Side note: it’s not always easy to print overlapping papers like this. I’m sure there’s 10+ programs on my computer that can open a JPG, but only one easily prints them across multipe pages.
02 cut w knife.jpg
03 kniife line.JPG
04 sharpie.jpg
I taped the picture to the wood and cut it out with a knife. The knife leaves a mark which I later colored over with sharpie. Other methods would be to use graphite paper or just trace it with a ballpoint pen pressing hard enough to leave an impression. If you use a knife with a complicated design, you might remove some portions of paper before you meant to.
05 coping outline.jpg
I cut the shape out with a coping saw. I made a few straight relief cuts in the corners to let the waste fall away and reorient the saw. I left one end attached to the board in case it’s helpful for clamping.
06 hole saws.jpg
The white circle is a scrap picture, 4” diameter. Most of my pictures I get printed at 4x6 or 4x5.3. I thought of using hole saws to make a circular hole for the picture, but I think they’re slightly too wide, in addition to being questionable about controlling and leaving a nice surface.
07 brace bit.JPG
So I did it the hard way. I drew a circle a little less than 4” with a compass, drilled a few holes, threaded the coping saw blade through a hole, and connected the dots.