Altered Picture Frames

Good morning, everyone!  This week has really flown by... I can't believe it's already Thursday.  I spent several hours Tuesday and Wednesday creating a bunch of new greeting cards using stamped images that I colored with Copic markers and some adrorable sentiment stamps from a Jillian Vance Design.  Her stamps are made of high quality material and are a dream to use.  I'll be posting some of the cards later but, in the meantime, I thought I'd show you a couple of wooden frames that I altered last week.  I picked up the "naked wood" frames at Michael's several months ago for $1 each.  I needed a wedding and baby gift in a hurry but as some of you are aware, I am currently unemployed so the gifts had to be inexpensive.  Fortunately, the intended recipients appreciate hand made items!

I covered the frames with patterned card stock and adhered it with Aleene's Tacky Glue (in the copper-colored bottle).  It works great for this purpose. The paper on the wedding frame is from DCWV's Luxury Stack and on the baby frame I used some cute paper that I found at Big Lots last summer.  I can't remember if it had a name.  When I was fairly sure the glue was dry, I added the embellishements; rhinestones and pearls for the wedding frame and glittered Grungeboard letters (by Tim Holtz) spelling out the new baby's name that I mounted on 1 1/4" cardstock squares.  The "Always & Forever" is cut on my Silhouette in red, gold and pearl white Shimmer cardstock also from DCWV using the normal, shadow and blackout layers.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Silhouette, the individual images are purchased and downloaded to your computer from their online store.  Unlike Cricut designs, you buy only the images you want instead of having to purchase a whole cartridge.  The images can be manipulated in several ways similar to those used by the Cricut.  Silhouette also offers a couple of different subscriptions that entitle you to either a fixed number of images each month or unlimited designs.  The second option is really the best deal if you do a lot of die cutting but since I use both machines, I only purchase the images I need for whatever project I'm working on.  That way, I'm not paying for something I'm not using.  They have some really wonderful designers but as with most things, there are pros and cons to each of the machines.  I happened to really love this "Always & Forever" design and all three layers were included in the cut file so it was well worth the 99 cents I paid for it.

Because these little frames don't come with glass inset, I took the little cardboard inserts and covered them with matching cardstock and tied a pretty ribbon around them and used stickers to put the recipient's names on them. The reason I did this was so that when a photo is placed in the frame, the cardboard insert can be reversed so that the decorated side shows when you look at the back of the frame.  You can also use them as templates for trimming the photo to fit properly into the frame.  I probably should have painted the wood before I covered the frames (I definitely will if I make more of these) but I was rather pressed for time.  I discovered though that the paper actually sticks better to bare wood than a painted surface.  Therefore, it's really only necessary to paint the back side of the frame and the wooden peg that acts as the easel to stand the frame up.

They were fun, relatively quick to make and I was happy with the results.  I hope you enjoyed today's projects.  Feel free to email me with any questions you may have.  Have a great day and a wonderful weekend!

Anniebee