DIY Painted Picture Frame

Hello Creatives!

A frame painting craft tutorial for you today. The end result is a textured frame that looks like it has some history... It has the look of having being painted a few times, but that is due to the texture that we will achieve through using paints and an acrylic gloss medium.

First, gather your supplies. Acrylic paints (Jo Sonja's acrylic paints are my pick), an acrylic gloss medium or varnish (Matisse Polymer Gloss Varnish is my fave), some fine sandpaper, and of course a frame and brushes and paint palette. Tissues will also come in handy.

When choosing a frame to paint, you want to grab something that has some different levels and surfaces. Some texture like flourishes or flowers would be even more interesting! I got this one from an op shop. 

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to painting your frame. Choose whatever colours you like. You could find an image with colours you love and try to replicate them into your frame.

After removing the backing and glass and giving my frame a light sand, I chose to coat my frame in two colour to start with. Turquoise, and a deep pink.

I then coated the frame with the acrylic gloss.

Once that was dry I mixed up some lighter pink and brushed a bit off onto some paper to 'dry' off my brush a bit, and then dry-brushed it onto the deep pink colour. I highlighted some of the thinner details of the frame with some bright green.

Then I mixed some pthalo blue with some of the varnish and brushed it over the turquoise. Use a damp (just damp- not wet) tissue to rub parts of this paint mix off before it has dried, leaving some areas darker than others.

I then added some orange paint by painting it onto a scrap piece of paper and rubbing it over the frame. I also did the same with some bright pink which you can see in the end photos.

Next up, I mixed up a lighter turquoise paint with some gloss varnish and scrumbled and painted that in random places all over the frame. I decided I would like to bring out more of the green layer so added some more highlights in using some yellow paint. I also used the pthalo blue mixed with some gloss to go over the pink part of the frame, using my tissue to wipe parts of the paint back, leaving darker areas especially in the recessed areas of the frame.

mixing paint :)

You could go nuts by adding more colour by dry-brushing, or adding more coloured gloss mixes, or scrambling more paint over it using the scrap paper. 

Once you're happy with the look of your frame, give the whole thing one final coat of gloss varnish.

So you can see how layering up the paint and gloss quickly adds texture & and the look of lots of layers. You can really play around with the techniques described to come up with your own unique frame in your choice of colours. Let the frame dictate to you by it's unique shape how it needs to be painted, and most of all, have fun!

Jules :)