Altered Frame Mini Tutorial

Hello and welcome to our 2nd tutorial. Today I am going to give you a mini tutorial on creating yourself a piece of wall art. This is what we will be creating:

To make this altered frame you need:

1 wooden frame (Mine is A4 and came from Wilkinson)

Selection of papers

Chipboard butterflies or other chipboard shapes of your choice

Black Thread

Needle

Decorated edge scissors, punches etc.

Paint

Ink

Glue

To complete the project:

• Firstly decide what colour you want your frame to be. I painted mine with Ranger Picket Fence Crackle Paint. But you could always keep yours natural or go for a glossy coloured paint. It’s also a good idea to make sure that it matches well to your papers.

• Cut a piece of scrap paper/card to the size of the glass in your frame. 

• Using decorated edge scissors, die-cutting machines, punches or drawing round objects (Bazzill just the edge strips and Sassafras Papers are good for this) cut strips of your papers with pretty edges. You want each of your strips to be about 2 inches wide so that you can layer them easily. I used a total of 8 strips for my frame but you can go as few or as many as you like. For the text paper strips I joined 2 pieces together to make it long enough for the frame.

• Starting with the strip that you want to go at the bottom of the frame, start layering and gluing the papers on top of each other leaving a few centimetres gap between each.

• Now cover your butterflies. Using a wet glue stick each butterfly to a different paper. When cutting the butterflies out make sure that you use a very sharp craft knife so that the paper cuts and doesn't tear. Also make sure that you wait until the glue has thoroughly dried.

• Ink the edges of the butterflies (I used a Walnut distress Ink).

• Arrange them randomly on the right side of your background and stick down.

• Using a pencil draw some little dotted lines out from your butterflies, make them wiggly and loopy!

• Now using a needle or paper piercer, pierce the holes in the paper and sew with the black thread.

• For the left side of the frame type out (or write on strips of white paper) a saying or poem that you like (I used ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost) Then cut out and ink the edges and stick down randomly.

• Your finished! Well you don’t have to be! You can add gems or stickles to your butterflies, add flowers or other chipboard to the outside of the frame etc etc. 

I hope you have enjoyed this little tutorial and I would love to see if you create any wall art based on it, feel free to share a link in the comments below.

Instructions © Maxine for Creative Hobby Supplies, Please do not reproduce without prior permission. 2013