The Key to Our Heart

I've been working on getting some pictures together for a gallery wall and thought it would be fun to add in some other items besides photos. A while back I found an old rusty key in the dirt in our side yard that I thought would be neat to frame. It seemed to fit the old door locks around the house so I'm not sure if it was the original key or one of the two antique replacement keys we had bought and accidentally dropped in the yard. I'm going to go with it was the original house key that had been lost in the yard for decades until I happened upon it while cleaning :o)

All the interior door knobs are original to the house. Here you can see the door to the bathroom with the replacement antique key we bought. No modern locking mechanisms on these doors. Aren't the old glass knobs beautiful?

And here's a picture of the rusty old key I found in the yard, it looks like it's seen better days .......... but I would remedy that!

I got out my steel wool and got to work removing the rust layer. A steel brush would have probably worked better and been a little quicker but alas all I had was steel wool. But it did the trick and I got most of the rust off.

It's not perfectly clean but that's part of the character, right. It shows it's age.

I had recently bought a book of scrapbooking paper from Micheal's on sale. I cut the paper to the size of my frame and then tried to use double-sided tape to tape the key to the paper. The tape held up for a few hours but wouldn't be a permanent solution so I got out my trusty glue gun and glued the key to the paper. That should hold it. I tried to put the key in the frame with the glass covering but it would not fit so I just removed the glass and here you go: