Do you have "empty" picture frames?

There’s a common trope in movies where a character is found to be not all they seem to be when another discovers all the pictures in the picture frames are the original display pics or else photos from a magazine. Do you have any pictures like this?

I have one artsy frame I got in Hawaii that has turtles around the edge that I decided to never use for one of my own pictures because the display photo is a lovely Hawaiian scene and goes perfectly with the frame.

I have another frame that used to have a picture of someone I dated, with some cutesy “LOVE” art on top that I repurposed after we broke up, and put a little cut out heart inside.

Does anyone else do this, or the more extreme movie scenario?

I have some frames I bought that I haven’t gotten around to filling with photos, but they’re in a box someplace. I don’t have empty frames up on the wall or on shelves.

When my son was a baby I bought some frames whose display picture showed a cool, unsmiling baby in a black turtleneck. I was impressed with his look, so I tacked the picture up near the crib for my son to enjoy.

I tend to buy more art than frames, so I don’t have any empty frames around myself. My sister and her fiance, though, have several frames hanging in their living room with the original display pics inside. They’re absurdly busy people, so I can only assume they bought them intending to put pictures inside – my sister’s big on photography – and then just went ahead and hung them all the wall instead of waiting for some far distant day when they might have time to put proper pictures in. Or I dunno, maybe they enjoyed having a fake family on the wall.

At any rate, this past Christmas I gave them a decorative frame with pictures already inside. They were a little too grateful not to have to sort them out themselves.

I actually do have one framed picture in my apartment that is a reduced-size copy of a magazine cover. What can I say? It was a really pretty picture!

(I have a lot of toys/dolls/action figures in my apartment that are still in the original packaging. The original clear plastic blister pack. I’ve had people tell me that this is really creepy. People who aren’t psychotic, I’m told, unwrap their toys!)

I have vintage and antique frames all over the house and someday I will try to match them up with art or sell them.

Why do you ask?

I had a buddy once who couldn’t get a date in a whorehouse with a hundred dollars in his hand, and he had a whole shelf full of frames with the original pictures of beautiful women in them.

Kind of. I bought a tray for my girly things that has several photo frame slots on it that I’ve left the stock photos in. The photos go on the floor of the tray, anyway, so it’ll never be seen. I decided to be lazy and leave them there. I do not have any regular picture frames without my personal photos in them, though, no.

I bought some nice frames at an estate sale filled with the guy’s personal photos. I never got around to replacing them with my own pictures and it eventually creeped me out so I stashed them in the basement for the time being.

Not the same at all. This is something you’ve declared a work of art and framed it accordingly. Propping up a picture of someone you don’t even know for whatever reason is just sad. (and Sad as I am I have more meaningful pictures than I do frames. Or wall space for that matter.)

When wallets used to come with fake pictures in them I’d keep them. I’d also keep a picture of the Kodak model girl and tell people she was my girlfriend.

This is the only way I’ve done it, too.