Tall Tales: Craig's Stories Behind His Unique Handmade Wooden Picture Frames

This frame was made with so much love that it will melt if exposed to direct sunlight for any substantial length of time. Just kidding. It is made entirely from wood.

The wood is from a beaver dam I ran into with my pirate ship, while cruising for damsels.

This 11x14 poplar frame sounds really good when you bang on it with a frozen wiener.

You know what else sounds good when you bang on it? A drum!

Actually, my drumming style has been likened (by me) to, "Blistering, skin-spanking thunder-bombs, slamming thru your skull like a barrage of rapid-fire sledgehammers tempered in the fires of Mordor, yet with the textured finesse and artful fluidity of an octopus doing Tai Chi."

This is a favorite driftwood frame.

I ran out of sand paper halfway through finishing this one, and had to rub the wood against a speaker playing a recording of a Bonnie Tyler song.

I might start putting a "Made in Canada" tag on these, just so nobody would suspect they just grow wild, in somewhere like Kathmandu, or Arkansas.

Actually, the wood in this unique frame was imported from a country that only I know about.

The profits from the sale of this frame will be donated to a charity called "frame-makers with burned-out table saw motors". I am the founder and only known member of this organization, so far.

Burned out table saw motors affect everyone.

Please. Make a difference.

I really liked this root wood frame. I have a photo of my beloved pet jazz-drummer that would have looked great in it. She plays AND LOOKS like Ginger Baker. Some of that is unfortunate. She's a rescue.

Anyway, I wasn't going to sell the frame, but I was forced at gun-point by illegal Norwegian nihilist vegans to sell it to them — at a discount, no less!

The wood from which this unique photo frame was made was once part of a tree near an old fire hall that partially burnt down, before it became drift wood. The wood, that is. Not the fire hall.

Ok, not really, but wouldn't that be ironic?

Yes it would, Alanis Morissette, unlike anything in your song.

By the way, the most excellently ironic thing that ever happened to me was tripping over a danger sign. That is ironic!

Okay, but get this: I was walking through a hospital at the time!

That actually is a true story.

The wood in this frame is from Cochrane, Alberta, where I once lived.

Actually, I five-times lived there. It kept sucking me back.

On a totally unrelated note, I would like to say that God does not believe in atheists.

This 18x24 frame is called "Reclaimed", because:

The frame was stolen from my shop, and fortunately, I was able (through a bit of investigative gleaning) to deduce who the thief was (because as well as being an artisan, photographer, creek pirate, Samurai warrior and fighter jet pilot, I am also a certified private detective) and, with the aid of a fake, but very real looking water pistol (yes, it wasn't even a real water pistol, but it looked like a real .44 Magnum), I was able to "re-claim" this particular frame.

This frame was very special to me.

I forget why…

A tree from which the wood for this frame was separated once stood on a beach house property in Barmouth, Wales. Here a very secret and special species of animal existed.

Its breeders paired up—believe it or not—a sea lion… and a chicken.

The animal was bred for its meat, but ironically, unlike most of your exotic meats, it tasted nothing like chicken.

Nor did it taste like sea lion. In fact, it had a flavor much like pygmy marmoset, which, as you know, is delicious, but a little greasy.

I recently found out that using a chainsaw left-handed (they only make right-handed ones) is EXTREMELY dangerous.

WOW. To think of all those hundreds of times I nearly shredded myself into a pile of bloody carnage, or cut a bunch of passers-by's heads off!!

A couple years ago, I was smack in the middle of fighting pirates on the mighty Fraser River in Western British Columbia, when I reached for a soggy, grey stock of wood as the only thing within my reach to replace the sword knocked out of my hand by the last remaining salty, one-eyed sea-bandit I hadn't sent overboard, crying.

He had his own steely, gleaming weapon poised at my jugular, foot pressed against my chest, growling raucously down at me the word "ARE!".

I managed to retort with a hoarsely discordant, "ARE NOT!!" and whacked him over the head with the very piece of wood that the frame you are looking at was made from, knocking him overboard and saving the lovely damsel-maiden who happened to be there and in some kind of distress.

Together, we returned all of the plunder to the townspeople, and lived blissfully-ever-onward, intermittently, before it all went bitterly sideways and now I am alone, penniless and bitter.

I am presently hoping to get hit by a bus, or contract some kind of painless, but terminal disease.

My ex-dog (she still lives with my ex-wife) once seemed to suggest that I refer to the wood in these frames as "Re-purposed".

She seemed to say, "…because its purpose used to be to hold leaves, but now it is to hold pictures".

What a weirdo. Good riddance.

I know it sounds very unlikely, but I nearly glued my cat to a Jehovah's Witness while assembling this frame. I have got to learn to be more careful…

You won't believe it, but this custom made frame, along with a couple other of my more unique shaped picture frames, was built completely by accident.

I love this frame.

I had it originally priced at 122,999.oo, but had to reduce the price nearly a thousand per cent, before it finally sold.

I try to use natural, environmentally friendly materials whenever possible. This frame was made partially out of soy and stained with recycled rhubarb juice.

The wood in this particular handmade wood picture frame is often referred to as "Barn wood". It obviously comes from Barn wood trees, but are they called that because they grow near barns, or something?

Well anyway, who cares.

No animals were harmed during the making of this frame.

Unless you consider children animals, and want to count the possible mental trauma the neighbors' kids suffered, as a result of all my profane screaming and hollering.

Oh, and chasing them down the street with a 2x4. They were bothering me while I was trying to work.

They're fine.

I always try to be as environmentally conscious as possible in the crafting of these handmade wooden picture frames. For instance, I imagined eating tofu for a second while working on this one.

Also it was sanded with the face of an un-shaven neo-hippie, and stained with that Ocasio Cortez girl's bulls*#t.

All three of the obligatory fluids of noble drudgery were secreted while fashioning this particular diamond willow wood 8x10 picture frame:

Blood, sweat and tears.

Blood, because I stabbed myself in the thumb with a chisel.

Sweat, simply because it was July in the Okanagan region of British Columbia at the time.

And tears, because of stabbing myself with a chisel (which alone would not likely have brought tears, but a Tammy Wynette song happened to be playing right at that moment).

While working on this 8x10 willow wood frame, I found myself thinking a lot about trees, as I often do, and how there are so many things about the life of a tree that parallel our own human lives.

I wish I had remembered some of them, because at the moment I can't think of a single one. All I can think about are cookies.