Use a CD as a wall art

Several years ago I attended a private party given by one of my favorite performers, Elton John. It cost a small fortune to attend and even though it was a black tie affair, I was determined to get his autograph. Yes, I know it's tacky to do that especially at a black tie party but when was I ever going to get a chance like that again? I thought about what I could have him sign that I would treasure and decided to take along one of my favorite CD's which is the sound track from the movie The Lion King.

After a few glasses of wine I finally worked up the courage to go introduce myself to him and asked him for his autograph. Being Elton John, he was not thrilled with my request but he did it anyway. Since that day, I have been trying to find a good way to display the autograph. I knew I would probably have to take it to have it custom framed and that was going to cost a bunch, so I put it safely away until I was ready to make the investment.

Right before Christmas I was in Michael's looking for a frame for a portrait I was giving as a gift and I saw the Double CD Frame from Structural Industries. I thought it was a really cool idea and then I remembered the autograph I had and thought this was the perfect way to display it.

The frame is black metal and has a white mat. The mat has two sides to it, a flat side to display a CD and a cut out side to display the CD Jacket. It measures 6 1/2 x 12" and the package says it fits all standard CD's.The frame also has 2 sets of hooks on the back so you can hang it either vertically or horizontally which ever works best for you.

It seemed like a simple project until I tried to put it together and ran into a few problems. On the mat they glued a piece of paper over the cut out portion to look like a CD jacket and a round one over the CD part that looked like a CD to show you how it looks finished. Now we are not talking a dab of glue to hold it in place or even the glue dots that can easily be peeled off, these puppies were glued around all the edges. To take it off I had to remove paper glued to paper. When I tried to remove the paper from the cut out part, it tore no matter which way I tried to pull it off so I ended up having to use an X-acto knife to trim out the hole.

On the CD side, I tried to just place the CD over the paper instead of trying to rip it off but this CD has a clear part around the center hole and you could see the picture on their paper through it. What I ended up doing was taking off as much as I could and then placing a small piece of black scrapbook paper under it so now through the clear part you see the black paper. When that was done I began to reassemble the frame and had another problem.

The back of the frame is made from a piece of particle board and not cardboard like most frames. The frame comes with a round plastic disc that you insert through the hole on the CD and the mat to hold it in place in the frame. That has a tail on the back like an anchor that you put in the hole and then screw a screw into. The piece of particle board has a hole in it so this tail goes through it and the back of the frame lays flat. Well, the hole did not match up with where the tail came through so we had to make another hole to close it up.

This turn out to be a bigger pain in the butt than I ever imagined but for the money it does the job and it looks pretty good. The only thing I would have liked to have added was the picture that was taken of me with Elton John as he was signing the CD for authenticity purposes but I guess you can't have it all. I finally have my CD up and on display instead of tucked away in a drawer.