Nowadays, do-it-yourself home furnishings are in great demand. There are many stores selling goods of this category. Handmade products look original, the authors invest not only imagination and skills, but also a piece of the soul. And it’s nice to have in the house not standard products from consumer goods, but an individual product, which is in a single copy. However, for such products you will have to pay a tidy sum, since authorship is expensive. It will be much cheaper if you show creativity, imagination and realize your vision of a household item, for example: photo frames, paintings, wooden mirrors.
Creative plans
Before you start any kind of work, you always need to draw up a rough plan of action, prepare materials and the subject that you want to frame. The finished product should organically fit into the interior of the room, whether it be an office or a residential apartment. The frame cannot but correspond to the style of the overall interior. Also, the materials from which the frames are made vary greatly in texture, in quality, in color. The wooden frame itself can be in a simple style, or it can be with beautiful openwork carvings.
Even a simple, even frame made of wood is complemented by design elements that will give it a special style and originality. You also need to decide what exactly to emphasize in the work. If the main thing in the project is the design of a ready-made frame, then it can be purchased in a store, and converted at home into a masterpiece. If the frame itself becomes the object of creativity, then it is better to do it yourself.
Material selection
In order to make a frame with your own hands from wood, the necessary wood is selected. Basically, you need to look at the figure and structure of the tree, since for this, in principle, any breed is suitable. If the frame is then painted, then the simplest one is selected - pine or spruce. If the structure of the tree is visible and the product is subsequently coated with varnish or stain, then you need to take wood with the original pattern. Walnut, ash, cherry, linden look very beautiful.
Beautiful frames for paintings with their own hands made of wood are created when carvings are applied to them (floral, plot or simple ornament). For carving, take softer wood, especially if the carver is a beginner. A professional, of course, will also make a pattern on the oak board, but for a beginner it will be difficult, since the oak is considered a very solid tree. You will also have to buy a set of cutters of different sizes.
Another option for making a wooden frame with your own hands is a simple wooden product, which is decorated with improvised materials from above. Now picture frames decorated with something unusual are fashionable. It can be pieces of bark, pencils, shells, buttons and other waste material.
Do-it-yourself wood frame
Before you make a frame for a picture of wood, you need to prepare the following materials and tools:
- plywood or fiberboard;
- wooden slats, plinth or baguette;
- hand saw or jigsaw;
- miter box;
- construction stapler;
- PVA glue;
- acrylic varnish or paint, brushes;
- stain (if necessary);
- plastic or metal eyelet;
- nails or screws;
- hammer or screwdriver (in extreme cases - a screwdriver);
- angle clamps;
- sandpaper.
If you are planning to glue the frame for the picture with something (it is not difficult to make it with your own wood), prepare the material that is needed for this. You can lay out the necessary pattern on the table in advance to understand how it will look.
Step-by-step instruction
The first step is to measure the size of the painting and cut a square or rectangle from plywood or fiberboard. Its size should be larger than the picture on the width of a wooden battens. After attaching a picture or photograph to the plywood, draw it with a pencil so as not to stain the object during work. After that, the picture can be put aside until the end of work.
The second step in the manufacture of a frame with your own hands from wood will be cutting the slats at an angle of 45 degrees. To do this, you need a saw and a miter box. A lath or a block of wood is inserted into the miter box and sawed off along the line. Next, repeat the procedure with another bar. Combine the corners of two pieces of wood, you should get a right angle of 90 degrees. We apply this angle to the plywood and mark the length of the other sides. After that, according to the marked marks, we make cuts of two other angles. Put the assembled frame on the plywood and check its size. If everything is clear, you can proceed to the next step.
The ends of the rails, sawn at 45 degrees, are smeared with PVA glue and tightly tightened with corner clamps, left alone until completely glued (for about 2 hours). After that, for better bonding, connect the corners of the rails with brackets, using the construction stapler.
Wood frame assembly
The last step in the manufacture of the frame will be the fastening of the parts together. There is a slight nuance. If you attach a picture or photograph forever, then it can be glued to plywood. Then everything is much simpler. You just need to nail the finished frame to the plywood with nails or fasten it with small screws. If the photo is inserted, then you will have to work hard.
In order for the photo to be freely inserted into the frame, you must leave a gap between the frame and the photo. In the purchased frame, the wooden slats are machined on a milling machine and a step for insertion is made. At home, not everyone has a router, so you need to do it differently. Between the frame and plywood, make an additional layer, for example, from thick cardboard. Stripes corresponding to the width of the frame are cut to size and glued along the perimeter of plywood on three sides. You do not need to do this from above. A picture or photograph will be inserted into that gap.
Then clean the surface with sandpaper and cover with a layer of varnish or paint. After drying, repeat the cleaning procedure and cover with another layer. Allow to dry. Acrylic varnish dries quickly and almost does not emit unpleasant odors.
A frame is made for a picture with his own hands from a tree for a short time. It remains only to attach a loop and hang it on the wall. The only thing that can be advised is to laminate the photo so that you can periodically wipe the dust without damaging the image itself.
Variety of materials
You can create frames with your own hands from wood and metal, baguettes and plastic, polyurethane skirting boards and simple branches. Now there is such a free approach to the choice of materials that it is possible to realize any flight of imagination. The frames are roughly knocked down by large nails, tied from the random size of the branches, burned with a blowtorch, peeled off with a stiff brush. Everyone has their own approach. Whoever thinks of something will embody in his work. Nowadays there are so many different materials and examples of other designers that you can, by looking at photos, choose the right one for yourself.
Designer frame for the mirror
It is possible to make frames not only from slats or bars. Consider several options for an unusual framework. For example, how to make a frame for a mirror of wood with your own hands using small twigs? We take plywood for this and cut out a figure several centimeters larger in diameter than the mirror.
If, for example, it is round, then a larger circle is drawn, etc. Then the mirror itself is glued onto the liquid nails in the center of the plywood circle. At the edges there is a strip of plywood, which we will decorate. To do this, take glue for the tree and in turn each twig is smeared with glue and put in a circle with the end in the middle. The work is scrupulous and long, but it will turn out a completely original thing.
Twig frame
Consider another example of an original photo frame. With their own hands from a tree, everyone can make it. A photograph is glued onto a plywood sheet and several centimeters of margin is left to the edges to frame the frame. Twigs of one or different lengths are collected, carefully dried and treated with an antiseptic.
After that, you can cover them with acrylic varnish, or you can leave them untouched. A beautiful twine is taken, four bundles are made of an equal number of branches. The bundles are tightly bound together. It turns out a frame of twigs, which is then glued to the free part of the plywood sheet.
Create your own version, create, search, try, and everything will work out! Good luck