My shakes are 92-years old, and the undersides of some were scorched when a former owner accidentally started a house fire over 50 year ago. In other words, they're brittle. Since nails could easily split the wood, I opted for strong glue. A good wood glue should work.

First, on the advice of the neighborhood hardware store, I cleaned the old shakes with a mixture of water and TSP and left them in the sun to dry.

Once they were thoroughly dry, I arranged the shakes how I wanted (paying attention to how they align with the sub-frame), glued them into position and weighed them down with a heavy book or two.

Next, I glued the shake frame onto a simple wooden frame that is intended to be decorated, and also weighed it down.

From the side, you could see a bit of the light wood of the sub-frame, so I used ordinary crayons to try to help it blend in with the color of the shakes.

Materials: Old (or new) cedar shakes - about 2" wide; ready-to-decorate wooden frame (mine was for a 4x6" photo); wood glue.