Picture Frames

James had a Big Cats 2013 calendar that he didn't want to throw away because it has some good pictures in it. I asked him to choose his favourite two so I could make frames for them and put up around our house :)

For the first one I wanted to do something simple. I cut out four strips of card and taped them together, measuring my frame around the picture.

Then I cut out paper in three shades of blueish colours. I wrapped the paper around the frame and taped it in place at the back.

I had planned to paint dots on my frame with puffy paint but at this point I decided against it because I thought it looked finished. I'll try out the puffy paint another time.

For the second frame I had a wave of inspiration from this broomstick, given to me a few Halloweens ago (thanks, Luke).

I cut up the broom to get all the twigs and made a frame base from card.

I covered the frame in PVA glue. And I put twigs all over it.

After it dried I checked the twig covering for gaps showing the card. I found some, and luckily I had quite few twigs left, so I filled in the gaps. I repeated this step a few times.

To encourage all the bits to stay in place, I splurged the whole thing in more glue.

Two days later I went back to my frame and peeled it off the plastic cloth I'd been working on. The corners of the card were still showing a little so I trimmed them down.

To finish the two frames, I bought some laminating sheets (in lieu of glass, which is oh so heavy). I didn't melt the sheets - I don't own one of those machines. I just trimmed the sheet down, taped it in place and taped the picture to the back. Then I stuck some string to the back of each frame to hang them up.