Cate here. I've been MIA since June because I was on vacation with Caleb, Chelsea & the rest of the fam followed by an epic week of Young Life camp.

Caleb is currently on staff with Capernaum {the Special Needs ministry branch of Young Life} which means I got to spend a whole week bunking, laughing, stretching, and adventuring with as well as delighting in these lovely ladies. Good times were had by ALL! If you've never been to a Young Life camp I highly suggest you find a way to go. It's not at all like the grimy outhouse and rainy campsites of my childhood. Our little group got to go tubing, climb on a ropes course, and eat a giant cookie for dessert. Awesome right? And after such a great couple of weeks, I'm even more pumped to share with you all this week's guest post!

Ok. So. I've been seeing a lot of chatter about engineer prints on pinterest lately. If you haven't heard, engineer prints are made on industrial printers typically associated with architecture and engineering plans. They are printed in black and white on GIANT paper. So what's the big deal right? Well. Rumor has it they are only $7 to have made at your local copy center. BOOM! $7 bucks for a 3ft x 4ft piece of potential wall art. Not bad right? Well I was still skeptical.

Often times I can get pumped about a new, intriguing project only to have the fun sucked out of it by a disappointing outcome when I DI-try it. But I am happy to report this is NOT one of those cases:

To get my trial run started, I needed to find something to have printed. So I made a wish to The Graphics Fairy and she happily granted with a FREE equestrian-themed printable

The thing about engineer prints is they only print in black and white. So I was careful to chose a print that was meant to be that way and went to Staples with the 8.5x11 pdf on a thumbdrive. I was skeptical of the printing quality since I was attempting to blow up the document to such a large size, but as my luck would have it Staples was having a sale - 24" x 36" engineer prints for $3. Figured it was a good enough price to pay for a test run. And let me tell you, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the image.

Now that I had my giant engineer print, I need a way to hang it up. Buying a giant frame to fit it kind of defeated the purpose of such a cheap print. So I consulted pinterest for more ideas and found these gems (pun intended ;)

{Source 1: Apartment Therapy} {Source 2: Curious Prints}

{Source 3&4: Mighty Vintage}

I was going to make my print into a faux pull-down chart!

I swung by the hardware store and found some cheap, simple molding for about $0.79 a foot. I cut it into four pieces 24" in length at the complimentary cutting station in the molding aisle. Don't be intimidated to use a hand saw at one of these stations - molding is soft and cuts easily. But I'm sure you can always ask one of the employees to help if needed. {Side note: after I did this project I even found that some home improvement stores sell craft wood in a nearby aisle that are already cut to 24" or 36" in length. Even better!}

Complete recap of materials needed:
Engineer Print {24" x 36"}
4 pieces of molding cut 24" each
Staple Gun, loaded
Twine

Materials now gathered, it was time to assemble. I lined up the top of the print and stapled it front-side-up along the molding.

Then I sandwiched the print between another cut piece of molding on top and stapled the sides in a cross pattern. I suppose I could have glued it too, but this has been holding fast for a couple weeks now. I did the same to the bottom of the print with the remaining two pieces of 24" molding.

To get it ready to hang, I measured and cut a the length of twine I needed and tied the ends - stapling it onto the back of either end of the top pieces of molding and right above the knot.