DIY photo frames: ideas, materials, master class

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

As technology advances, fewer people keep photos at home. Most of them are stored electronically on flash drives or disks. This, of course, is convenient, but still, sometimes you want to decorate the room with the brightest and most memorable pictures. These are photos of loved ones, children, family photos. It is for such important shots that unusual do-it-yourself photo frames are made.

They are made from paper, corrugated cardboard, fiberboard and plywood, wooden sticks and fabric. Frames are made 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 will consider various options for both making and decorating photo frames with your own hands, what you need for this, what materials you need to prepare for work.

How to make a photo frame?

Before you decorate the material, you need to make the frame itself. The work is done in several ways. If you are not a professional carpenter and do not know how to cut corners, then you can refuse to work with wood. At home, it is much easier to make 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 with a jigsaw. It can be a square, rectangle or any other shape. The photo can be located in the center of the part, or it can be shifted to one side.

On the front of the building you need to cut a hole through which the photo will be visible. Usually it is represented by a frame, the thickness of which is several centimeters. But manufacturing options also sometimes differ from the standard. You can make both a flat and a three-dimensional front panel, round or heart-shaped. Sometimes, when making a photo frame yourself with your own hands, the front part may be completely absent, and decoration begins next to the photo. A cardboard support is often attached to the back panel. Then the photo frame can be put on a shelf. If the craft is hung on the wall, then you will need a loop for the rope.

Design with newspaper tubes

To decorate a photo frame with your own hands from cardboard, you can use the following method. A square or rectangle is cut out of thick or corrugated cardboard, on which the selected photo is pasted. You can paste over the entire surface with glossy paper before placing the photo. Then we have to decorate the perimeter of the cardboard around the photo.

For this we will 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 the table and wound on a knitting needle. The edge of the sheet is smeared with PVA glue and attached to the last turn. You will need a lot of such blanks.

A do-it-yourself photo frame made of cardboard 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 acrylic paints. To fix the effect and give the frame brightness and shine, the product can be opened with acrylic varnish at the end.

Tubes are glued on PVA glue. Excess parts are cut off with sharp scissors. The edges around the perimeter can also be pasted over with a tube, but this is not necessary. Flattened tubes look interesting, which are ironed after manufacturing.

Decoration with thin twigs

How to make a photo frame with your own hands? You can use a jigsaw and cut out the frame itself from plywood. The back of the craft can be created from thick cardboard. It is desirable to process plywood with sandpaper and cover with a layer of paint or varnish. If you need a dark background for further decoration, then use the stain.

When the base of the frame itself is ready,you can start the original decoration with thin branches. They are laid out along the frame horizontally and vertically. In the corners they can cross. Attach them pointwise with a glue gun. Two opposite corners are decorated with dried moss and artificial flowers. You can make them from satin ribbons or fabric.

Frame decoration with shells

If you like to make your own interior items, while relaxing on the sea coast, do not forget to collect a lot of bright beautiful shells. You can thus make a do-it-yourself photo frame decor, as in the photo below in the article.

You can insert a photo from your vacation at sea into the frame. A glue gun is used to glue the perimeter. Shells can be arranged in different colors and sizes, filling all the voids with small details.

Frame with quilling

You already know how to make a photo frame with your own hands from plywood. In this version, after processing, it is covered with a dark stain and additionally opened with acrylic varnish, since the decorating elements do not completely cover the base, it is partially visible.

DIY photo frame decor is made from quilling strips of different colors, but the same width. They can be purchased at any stationery store. If you have never made quilling elements before, then this is quite simple. You need to choose the basis on which twisting will be performed. Quilling masters use a template ruler and a special metalcrochet. But if you use this technique once, then you do not need to spend money on purchasing devices. They may well be replaced by a wooden skewer, in which you need to split the end with a knife. 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 decorative element, then the next one is glued to the edge and the winding continues further. At the end, the edge is glued on PVA to the last turn. By pressing fingers on the figure, details of various shapes are formed - leaves, drops, squares or triangles. First, large parts are glued, and then voids are filled with small ones. When sticking to the frame, PVA is smeared on the end part of the craft and pressed gently with the whole palm.

Thread wrapping

DIY photo frame master class from yarn, 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 to the back of the glue gun. Then the winding starts. The threads are stretched and each next turn fits snugly against the previous one.

For Valentine's Day, this frame can be made in the shape of a heart. You can decorate a photo frame with your own hands with crocheted flowers. For lovers of knitting, creating such simple elements will not be a problem. Contrasting thread colors are used to decorate the frame.

In addition to knitting yarn, this way you canwrap the craft and hemp rope of different thicknesses. Decorate in this case with a burlap flower, you can make a bow from ropes of different thicknesses.

DIY photo frames from improvised materials

A frame made of corrugated cardboard packaging can be painted with gouache paints in the color you like. Then the top frame is decorated with eggshells. To do this, use food coloring. The work is carried out similarly to dyeing Easter eggs. The dye dissolves in cold water. The eggs are boiled, cooled and lowered into a glass of paint for 15 minutes. Colors are optional.

After uniform staining, the shell must be removed and carefully broken into large elements. Glue it in the form of a mosaic. You can simply arrange different parts in a chaotic manner, 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 decoration

It is not difficult to make photo frames from improvised materials with your own hands. You can cut two pieces of fiberboard. The back wall is represented by a simple rectangle or square, and a hole for a photograph is cut inside the front wall. It can be made in a traditional shape, or you can create it in the shape of a heart, as in the photo below.

Only the top panel is decorated. You can decorate with ordinary buttons. Different shades of the same color look beautiful. For example, raspberry, pink, light pink and white. They are placed as follows: first, large buttons, then the voids are filled with small ones. You can stick them in two rows, in a checkerboard pattern.

To slightly diversify the appearance of the craft, thin satin ribbons are threaded into some buttons and small bows are tied. You can attach artificial flowers to one of the corners.

Decoration with tree cuts

This decoration can be done on a plywood photo frame. The base is cut with your own hands using an electric or manual jigsaw. Cutting is done along the line marked 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 necessary to process it again with sandpaper, but a finer No. 80 is taken. Then the surface is re-opened with acrylic varnish.

Each cut of a tree is processed in the same way. The bark is cleaned, then the surface is polished with sandpaper and varnished. Before gluing the parts to the surface of the frame, they must be cut so that there is a flat surface. Each row of "pancakes" is arranged with a slight shift.

Cloth-covering

One of the simple options for making photo frames is to cover the surface with a cloth. A thin strip of matter is cut out and twisted into several layers. This way, no split edges will be visible and the design will turn out to be more voluminous.

One corner is decorated with artificial flowers or self-made from fabric or satin ribbons.

The article describes in detail the options for making photo frames with your own hands from different materials, gives tips on decorating crafts. You can use the samples to complete your work, or you can come up with your own unique version of the work.