Friday 26 February 2016

Tiny Frames

Alright, these are my favourite thing that I've made so far! I tried lots of different things and it was a really great learning experience.  (The tall, skinny blackboard on the right is the one I made a while ago.  I'm just including it for the sake of completeness).



Blackboard: That was the first frame method I tried and I did it the 'regular' way one would, using wood, sanding it down, chamfering the edges, cutting the ends at a 45 degree angle, creating a 90 degree join.... It was very fiddly and tough to keep it square (still haven't made a gluing jig).


Arch-topped mirror: For this one, I used card in two different thicknesses.  I made the top using a circle die which I ran through my die-cutting machine (it's a Big Shot. I got it last summer and I adore it, even though it nearly cost me my marriage to Mr Gypsy because I made him drive out of the way to go buy it from an amazing craft shop in the middle of Dorset's the New Forest). So I had 4 pieces for this frame: the three sides of the square and a semi circle for the arch.  I glued them together on graph paper, which helped keep my corners square, and then cut it away with a craft knife afterwards.  Then I drew around it onto a thick piece of card and sandwiched a piece of tinfoil between the two.  The glue I used was white PVA glue.



Circular frame: several circles die cut from card and then glued together.  Three little flat-backed flowers. Gesso.

Corkboard: layered cardboard, glued onto a pre-cut rectangle of card. Mitre-cut edges etc.

White chunky frame with beading: By the time I made this one, I was fed up of messing about with tiny, fiddly strips of card and I realised: the beauty of using card instead of wood is it's cheap! So this final one was quite simply a rectangle cut out of some thick book board card, with a smaller rectangle cut out of the middle of it.  Then I cut out another skinnier rectangle to glue on top of it and glued some tiny bead strands on top of that for the... well for the beading.  It's my favourite frame and my favourite method by a mile!


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