Altered Frame with Americana Feel


I just love wandering the aisles at Michael's, the Dollar store, and WalMart looking for inexpensive things to cover with paper, stamping and embellishments. Michael's has lots of plain wood items that are about one dollar like this frame.



It has a little dowel to put in the back to stand it up, or you can hang it on the wall.



So, here's my frame finished. That's my hubby Paul in the hockey mask. He asked me why I used that photo rather than one where we could see his face better. Honestly, he's not that good looking. (ha-ha. Oh yes he is!) Actually, I really like this photo of him because I think he's pretty tough looking as a hockey player. I also think it's cool that he still plays hockey at 51. And he loves it! He sometimes plays with really old guys and they call him "kid" on the ice.


I started off by painting the frame with a diluted brown acrylic paint so it appeared more like a stain. Why didn't I just use a stain? I didn't have any on hand and I had plenty of acrylic paint. After it dried, I just started digging out scraps of reds, blues and tans from various Close To My Heart paper packs I have here. The frame is a nice size so that the squares of paper can be cut an even 2 x 2 and the rectangles are 1 1/4 x 2. What a great use for paper scraps! I could make a million of these frames with all the scraps I have.

The buttons and ribbons are Outdoor Denim and I added some Antique Copper bitty brads in the holes of the two big buttons at the bottom. I like how that turned out. Different. The stamps I used are Star Power and Wishing Star. I inked everything will Desert Sand and used Desert Sand and Barn Red inks for the stamping. Before adding the embellishments, I gave the frame a light coating of acrylic sealer. The plain frame didn't come with anything to protect a photo so I cut a square from a page protector to fit in the space. All in all, it took me less than an hour to complete the whole thing.

Comments

  1. WOW!! I TOTALLY LOVE this!!! I bought some of these frames a while ago but hadn't tried doing anything with them yet. I'm so inspired to try one now!! Thank you!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome! Love how you mixed all the paper packets up! It is beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a fabulous idea, Annette! I love how this turned out and scraps, I have plenty of those around!!! Now, if I could borrow a little of your talent in turning them into something acceptable, I'll be all set! Excellent work!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you have a question you would like answered, please e-mail me at AnnetteMGreen@gmail.com