Wedding Gift Frame

Love is in the air, and I am wandering around the city of love – Paris. What better time to share a project on Love?

Speaking of love , with June and wedding fever just around the corner you may be attending a wedding. Or perhaps even planning one yourself.

It is wedding week here at The Hybrid Chick and we have some awesome wedding related tutorials and projects here to inspire you.

Today I want to show you how to decorated this Love frame. Pretty it up in the bride and grooms choice of colour and use it as a gift for the special couple. You might even want to make it in your colour scheme and keep it for yourself.

Mind you, you can’t go wrong with white – or black!

I have used:

Kaiser Love Frame (purchased in Australia)
White & Black Paint
Digital Scrapbook Kits – Fabrications Classic from Quirky Twerp and Foxy Chic from Jennifer Fox
Lace
Ribbons
Emphimera – little heart charms
Bling – stick on crystals
Glue Stick
Hot Glue Gun
Fabric Flowers
Buttons
Thread

I always start my wooden projects with a coat of white paint. Just plain old house paint as there is nothing “crafty” in big enough supply available here. This is a semigloss and it seems to work well sealing the wood and giving a nice base to work on.

After letting the paint dry, sand the rougher edges down with some sanding paper. It looks nice like this and it was tempting to leave it my usual shabby white – but this time I am after more drama which meant giving it a couple of coats of black paint too. Let each layer dry well in between coats.

Now hang it somewhere pretty and you are done!

Just kidding.

Print out some strips of paper and tag’s from the kit of your choice. Here you can see I have done some wider bits as well as narrow area’s and also a few different choices in paper design. This is usually done before I paint, so I know my paint colour choice will work with the paper. Plus it lets the printed paper dry out really well. Important if you are using glue or mod podge so as to make sure there is less likelihood of smudging.

Usually I have an idea of the desired outcome but don’t know exactly what I want to use on the piece. So I gather up a bunch of ribbons, and other pretty things in the colour scheme and have them ready. Here are some for inspiration.

You can even paint them if the colour isn’t what you need.

Start by laying out some paper strips and other bits you have collected on the wood piece. Tear the paper, and cut around the edges to fit the letter or frame.

To get the paper to fit roughly cut the paper strips and tear down some of the edges. This can be made easier by lightly folding the edge over, not creasing it real hard though – just a little. Then tear the paper towards yourself with the printed side facing you.

When you have done that you can also curl some of the edges around using a thin skewer or shish-kabob stick. When you are happy with the layout of your pieces begin to glue them down, starting with the paper. I like to use the glue stick for the paper as it allows me to slide it around a bit and position it right.

For the lace, flowers and ribbons I prefer to use a hot glue gun.