How to make a photo frame with their own hands from improvised materials at home

A collection of photos of your loved ones, family photos, memorable events, faces of friends - it's important for the atmosphere in your house or apartment. Insert the best photos of your children or parents in beautiful frames - they will immediately transform the interior, add intimacy, positivity. This is a great gift for an anniversary, an original decoration of a cabinet or a living room.

How to make a photo frame with your own hands? There are many techniques that can be a great way to make them at home. When a certain skill is achieved, it is even possible to put the most interesting results up for sale.

The advantage of handmade work is uniqueness, originality of ideas, and painstaking design. The most common techniques for creating photo frames will be discussed below.

Material for photo frames

What you can use for making picture frames:

wooden baguette from under paintings, you can take purchased frames with or without painting - plastic, glass, cardboard;
Glue for paper and wood, a glue gun or double-sided adhesive tape;
scissors, awl, razor, model knife;
a stand for the vertical position of the frame (it can be part of the design or it can be attached to the back);
Decor: beads, buttons, shells, pebbles, rhinestones, sequins, ribbons, threads and many other things.

Decorating a photo frame is a simple and fun process. It is important to observe the style - the result should fit into the general mood of the room, the atmosphere. A beautiful frame enlivens a dresser, console, living room mantel, desk, bedside table.

Recommendations

In the process of working on the frame, you can adhere to the following tips from experienced craftsmen:

First you should think about the size of the product. Determine where it will be placed - on the wall, on a table or on a shelf, window sill, in the nursery, kitchen, corridor, living room. Accordingly choose the style and parameters to fit the product into the interior.
Choose the technique and necessary materials to get the most interesting design. There is no need to overcomplicate the model, it will improve and improve itself in the course of the work.
Specify the specific characteristics of the materials and items that will be used in the decoration. For example, plastic elements do not tolerate heat - such a frame is risky to put on a fireplace. Shells and other little things will fall off if they are glued with water-based glue to the frame for the bathroom or balcony. Some paints and paper burn out in direct sunlight.
Prepare your workspace, gather all the necessary tools nearby.
Get in the mood for creativity and start creating a masterpiece!

You can get inspiration from magazines and websites on creativity, in art and furniture showrooms, museums, at photo exhibitions, in art galleries.

Wooden frame

A classic version of the basis for a photo is a photo frame with their own hands made of wood. You can buy the blank in a store for photographers or in a salon for needlework. Decorate the tree with any means, often painted. And if you have the skills to work with wood, you can make the frame with your own hands.

Wood is durable and inexpensive material, and it can be varnished, painted, patterned by burning, even sawed out with a jigsaw shaped patterns.

An interesting combination is when wooden parts and decorative elements are also attached to the wooden frame. For example, adding bark or twigs, bars from another species looks very elegant. Chips also come in handy.

Frame from cardboard and paper

An easy and inexpensive way to decorate a photo is a frame made of cardboard or paper. All you need is a paper base, a ruler, a pencil and scissors. Glue, scotch tape or stapler are used according to the situation.

The paper can be painted beforehand, even entrusting this task to a child. Frames with texts, letters and calligraphic inscriptions look especially interesting. Combination of different fonts and styles. The size and shape of the frame can vary to the taste of the master, depending on the capabilities of the paper.

Cardboard material is also actively used for this purpose. It bends and glues well, is easy to color, and is generally more reliable than paper in terms of strength. And if you take colored cardboard, you won't even need coloring. The traditional variant of a frame is the so-called paperback, the cardboard counterpart of the baguette.

Paper and cardboard serve not only as the basis for the frame as a whole. Partially paper and cardboard elements can be used for decorations, either with mosaics or in a different format. Paper material is great for attaching to the plane. And if you take colored magazines and newspapers, you can twist a lot of tubes out of them, lay out a whole well, stacked in rows.

An interesting solution - circles of paper of different diameters in the technique of quilling. You can also apply their skills in folding origami style figures, do embossing.

The most original method - creating three-dimensional frames, especially double. You can take the paper modules, paper with ragged edges, corrugated. And children can supplement the work with applique in their performance.

Decor from improvised materials

You can also make great photo frames with your own hands from improvised materials. After all, a frame is one of the things that can bring to life any ideas of the creators. And it will always be a unique design, author's work.

Sea rocks and shells

Pebbles, semi-precious stones and gems, crystals, shells of all types are the perfect decoration. You can choose elements in one scale or by size, mix in an assortment, lay out words or ornaments. Also pebbles are interesting to paint, to put small pictures or drawings on them.

Attach the stones can be epoxy glue or composition for rhinestones (it does not smell as much), acrylic gel. Before gluing, the pebbles should be washed and dried, also degreased. Then the stones will not fall off, the frame will be durable. When the decoration is finished, you can cover the entire composition with a transparent varnish.

Tree bark

Decorations made of bark look original and environmentally friendly. This is a good element for a rustic style in the interior, a country house. Bark is collected in the forest, it is available to all.

Recommendation: It is better to remove fresh bark from a felled or growing tree, you can also soak dried wood.

It is more convenient to decorate a photo frame with small pieces of bark. The work is very creative, the pattern of bark often leads to different ideas. And no two compositions will ever be the same. If there are large pieces of thin bark, they can be wrapped around the base.

Dried twigs.

Small branches or medium-thick pieces of wood can also serve as an interesting decoration. The structure of the branches will make the design unique. Only it is important to check that the branches have not been eaten by beetles, otherwise larvae can appear on the frame. The material is dried to get rid of insects, painted and varnished.

Books

If the house has an unnecessary old book with ruined pages, it can be made into a photo frame. And if it has a textile cover, there will be additional decoration. It is enough to cut a hole, glue a file on the back and insert a photo - the product is ready. Such a frame fits perfectly into the interior of a library or study.

Threads

Crocheted baguette, thread weave, textile materials look soft and cozy. You can simply wrap the frame with thick yarn - it will be rustic style. In a child's room you can put a frame with different colored threads and scraps decorations.

Frames give a lot of room for creativity, especially since there is a selection of master classes on the Internet, galleries with examples of work. The main thing is to put your heart into the product, then it will definitely be beautiful and unique.