With the development of technology, fewer people keep photographs at home. Most of them are stored electronically on flash drives or disks. This, of course, is convenient, but still sometimes I want to decorate the room with the most vivid and memorable pictures. These are photos of beloved people, children, family photos. It is for such important shots that unusual photo frames are made by hand.
They are made of paper, corrugated cardboard, fiberboard and plywood, wooden sticks and fabric. Frames are made out with a variety of materials. Use junk improvised material that does not require cash investments. It is convenient, fast, and the frames are original and spectacular.
In the article, we consider various options for both manufacturing and decorating photo frames with your own hands, what you need for this, what materials need to be prepared for work.
How to make a photo frame?
Before decorating the material, you need to make the frame itself. Work is done in several ways. If you are not a professional carpenter and do not know how to kill corners, then you can refuse to work with wood. At home, it is much easier to do crafts from thick paper, packaging corrugated cardboard, fiberboard or plywood. The frame consists of two parts - back and front.
Consider building a drawing to make a photo frame with your own hands. First, the size of the photo is measured. It is located on the back of the craft, represented by a single piece of cardboard or plywood cut by a jigsaw. It can be a square, a rectangle, or any other shape. The photo can be located in the center of the part, and can be shifted in one side.
On the front of the structure you need to cut a hole through which the photograph will be visible. Usually it is represented by a frame whose thickness is several centimeters. But manufacturing options also sometimes differ from the standard. You can make both a flat and three-dimensional front panel, round or in the shape of a heart. Sometimes, when making a photo frame by yourself, the front part may be completely absent, and decoration begins next to the photo. A cardboard support is often attached to the rear panel. Then the photo frame can be put on a shelf. If the craft is hung on the wall, then you need a loop for a rope.
Newspaper decoration
To design a photo frame with your own hands from cardboard, you can use the following method. A square or rectangle is cut from thick or corrugated cardboard onto which the selected photo is pasted. You can glue the entire surface with glossy paper before placing the photo. Then there is the decoration of the cardboard perimeter around the photo.
For this we use newspaper tubes. You can make them both from newspapers and from any printed glossy magazine. To twist thin identical tubes, you can use a wooden skewer or a metal knitting needle. The same pages are cut. Each in turn is laid out on a table and wound on a knitting needle. The edge of the sheet is smeared with PVA glue and attached to the last turn. Such blanks will need a lot.
Do-it-yourself cardboard photo frames can be glued in different ways. You can arrange newspaper tubes with rays, as in the photo in the article. They look beautiful and weaving, horizontal and vertical placement. You can leave the craft in this form, but newspaper tubes are beautifully painted with acrylics. To fix the effect and give the frame brightness and shine, the product at the end can be opened with acrylic varnish.
Tubes are glued onto PVA glue. Excess parts are cut with sharp scissors. The edges around the perimeter can also be glued with a tube, but this is not necessary. The flattened tubes, which are ironed after manufacturing, look interesting.
Decoration with thin branches
How to make a photo frame with your own hands? You can use a jigsaw and cut out the frame from plywood. The back of the craft can be made of cardboard. It is desirable to process the plywood with sandpaper and cover it with a layer of paint or varnish. If you need a dark background for further decoration, then use a stain.
When the frame base itself is ready, you can begin the original decoration with thin branches. They are laid out along the frame horizontally and vertically. In the corners they can intersect. Attach them with a pointed glue gun. Two opposite corners are decorated with dried moss and artificial flowers. You can make them from satin ribbons or fabric.
Seashell frame decoration
If you like to make home decoration yourself, then while relaxing on the sea coast, do not forget to collect a lot of bright beautiful shells. You can thus make your own photo frame decor, as in the photo below in the article.
You can insert a photo from a vacation at sea. For gluing the perimeter use a glue gun. Shells can be arranged in different colors and sizes, filling all the voids with small details.
Quilling frame
How to make a photo frame with your own hands from plywood, you already know. In this embodiment, it is treated with a dark stain after processing and additionally exposed with acrylic varnish, since the decorating elements do not completely cover the base, it is partially visible.
DIY photo frame decor is made of quilling strips of different colors, but the same width. They can be purchased at any stationery store. If you have never done the elements of quilling, then it is quite simple. You need to choose the basis on which the twisting will be performed. Quilling masters use a ruler and a special metal hook. But if you use this technique once, then you do not need to spend money on the purchase of devices. They can be replaced with a wooden skewer, in which the knife needs to split the end. A strip of paper is inserted into the slot, and winding begins.
Skeins can be made both tight and loose. If one strip is not enough to create a decor element, then the next one is glued to the edge and the wrapping continues further. At the end, the edge is glued to the PVA to the last turn. By pressing with your fingers on the figure, parts of different shapes are formed - leaves, drops, squares or triangles. First, large parts are glued, and then small voids are filled. When gluing on the frame, PVA is smeared on the end part of the craft and gently pressed with the entire palm.
Thread winding
Do-it-yourself yarn photo frames master class read on. Work takes place only on the front panel of the frame, cut out of thick cardboard. You can take two layers of paper so that the frame keeps its shape well. Then a thick thread is taken and attached on the back to the glue gun. Then the winding begins. The threads are pulled and each subsequent turn is tightly adjacent to the previous one.
On Valentine's Day, such a frame can be made in the shape of a heart. DIY photo frame can be decorated with crocheted flowers. For lovers of knitting to create such simple elements will not be a problem. To decorate the frame, contrasting thread colors are used.
In addition to knitting yarn in this way, you can wrap the craft and hemp rope of different thicknesses. In this case, they decorate with a flower from burlap, you can make a bow from ropes of different thicknesses.
DIY photo frames from improvised materials
A frame made of packaging corrugated cardboard can be painted with gouache paints in your favorite color. Then, the upper frame is decorated with eggshell. To do this, use food coloring. The work is carried out similarly to coloring Easter eggs. The dye is soluble in cold water. The eggs are boiled, cooled and lowered into a glass with paint for 15 minutes. Colors are selected as desired.
After uniform coloring, the shell must be removed and carefully broken into large elements. Stick it in the form of a mosaic. You can simply arrange the different parts in a chaotic order, or you can create some kind of ornament. It all depends on the desire of the master. To make the craft bright and shiny, at the end of the work the frame is covered with acrylic varnish.
Button Decorating
Do-it-yourself photo frames are easy to do from improvised materials. You can cut two parts from fiberboard. The back wall is represented by a simple rectangle or square, and a hole for a photograph is cut inside the front. It can be made in a traditional form, or it can be created in the shape of a heart, as in the photo below.
Only the top panel is decorated. You can make decor using ordinary buttons. Different shades of the same color look beautiful. For example, raspberry, pink, light pink and white. Place them as follows: first, large buttons, then small voids are filled. You can stick them in two rows, in a checkerboard pattern.
To slightly diversify the appearance of the craft, thin satin ribbons are woven into some buttons and small bows are tied. You can attach artificial flowers to one of the corners.
Decoration with wood cuts
Such decoration can be done on a plywood photo frame. With your own hands, the base is cut using an electric or manual jigsaw. Cutting is carried out in line with a pencil. Then the edges of the work are processed with sandpaper No. 100. Then the plywood is covered with acrylic varnish. After that, the pile of wood rises and it is required to process it again with sandpaper, but the smaller No. 80 is taken. Then, the surface is opened again with acrylic varnish.
Each saw cut of a tree is processed in a similar way. The bark is cleaned, then the surface is sanded with sandpaper and varnished. Before gluing parts to the surface of the frame, they must be cut so that there is a flat surface. Each row of "pancakes" is located with a slight shift.
Cloth
One of the simple options for making photo frames is to fit the surface of the fabric. A thin strip of matter is cut out and twisted into several layers. So split ends will not be visible and the design will turn out to be more voluminous.
One corner is decorated with artificial flowers or independently made from fabric or satin ribbons.
The article describes in detail the options for making photo frames with their own hands from different materials, gives tips on decorating crafts. You can use samples to carry out your work, or you can come up with your own unique version of the work.