Almost all of the digital picture frames that I've
seen on the web are at least three inches thick, some as
many as six. Many are custom-made or store bought shadow
boxes. I wanted a wall-hanging frame that was as flat as
possible but one that had enough room in the back to house
all of the laptop's necessary guts. I don't have the
woodworking tools to make one myself so I was on the hunt.
While doing some research to get ideas from other people's
projects, I came across a
website in which a guy made a
wall-hanging picture like this using a frame from
IKEA, the Swedish furniture store.
I liked the look of his final product so much I stole,
ahem, used his idea. I found the same frame, but in
wood instead of aluminum, at the brand new IKEA store
in Michigan for a very reasonable $17.99. If you visit
that guy's
website, you'll notice that he says
he used the same model laptop that I used but I think
he might be mistaken. The layout of the motherboard he
used is very different from the one I used.
In case you want to use the same frame, here are the
specifics. It is the IKEA "RIBBA" 50 cm square frame with a
20 cm square opening in the matting, not that that matters
since you'll be cutting a new mat to fit the dimensions of
the LCD. This particular frame is ideal because it sticks
out from the wall by only 35 mm and has the glass and
picture up in the front part of the frame with a gap in the
back in which I can hide the computer. The gap is only
about 25 mm, which is not a heck of a lot of room, so I had
to get creative in order to keep everything as flat as
possible later on. Yes, I know my pictures aren't very
interesting yet. They get better, I promise!
