Pictures are memories, frozen in time. They often carry a great deal of sentimental value, so it makes sense that we would want to frame them in a special way. Sometimes a very basic picture frame is all it takes to adorn a wonderful photo, but sometimes we can accentuate these photographs, paintings or drawings with decorative picture frames. A lot of these can be made by embellishing basic picture frames to suit your needs. This article presents a couple of ideas for creating your very own decorative picture frames.
One option is to paint a picture frame yourself. In order to make hand painted decorative picture frames, you will need a basic wooden frame, preferably already painted a solid color. This is good, because it means you have less work to do in preparing the painting surface. Acrylic paints are a good medium to work in, especially if you are just trying to do something basic, or are not a very experienced artist. With hand painted decorative picture frames, you literally get to choose your own adventure. You can make a wonderful Mother's Day gift, for example, by painting World's Best Mom on the top of a basic frame, and doodling, in paint, various sketches that are important to your family. Ideas might include hearts, soccer balls, flowers, fruits, or band-aids. Really, anything that reminds you of mom. It's a very basic way to create your own decorative picture frames with meaning.
Another idea for creating decorative picture frames is to do some kind of decoupage. This includes taking images or photographs from magazines, documents, newspapers or your own photo albums, and cutting out pieces to paste together along the edges of a frame in a collage of sorts. Your local art supply store will help you pick out the right kinds of pastes and sealants, but this can result in very beautiful, unique and personalized decorative picture frames. This type of technique is particularly effective when framing quotes, or photographs of one individual.
A very fun and spunky way to create decorative picture frames can be to use different textures as your adornments. Pick out jewels, beads, chains or feathers, and paste them in various angles and patterns along the edge of the frame. This tactic is particularly cool, because it allows you to make entire sets of decorative picture frames for use in a room. For example, if you have a room done in creams and gold, you can create an entire set of picture frames with crystal and gold embellishments along the edges of the frame, and put black and white or sepia tone pictures inside to complete the room!