Make a picture frame from aged wood. We give new life to old frames: we decorate them in an antique style

If you have frames made of untreated wood or simply boring ones that have lost their attractiveness, then you can completely transform them by “dressing” them in black, shading them with elegant gilding. All you need is paints and brushes, simple equipment and a little time. And you will give the most ordinary frames a noble “antique” look. And then all that remains is to place paintings or photographs in such luxurious frames and decorate your interior of your home.

You will need:

Old or new wooden frames;
acrylic paints (black, bright gold, pale gold);
soluble shiny varnish for finishing;
latex gloves;
small and medium-sized flat brushes;
round brush for painting;
medium grit sandpaper;
Toothbrush.

Operating procedure:

You can choose one of the methods listed here or a combination of them. When the frame is finished, be sure to apply a coat of glitter varnish to it!

Finishing with sandpaper

Paint the frame gold by mixing bright and pale gold paints. Apply a coat of black paint. Leave to dry. Then sand the frame in places with sandpaper so that the golden background appears slightly. Using a paint brush dipped in gold paint, decorate the frame with your own design. On flat or smooth frames, draw a light border or make a simple pattern along the edge of the frame.

Finishing with a dry brush

Paint the frame black and leave to dry. Dry your flat brush thoroughly and dip it into a large amount of gold paint. First, run the brush over a clean piece of fabric, and then over the frame, so that visible traces of paint remain. Apply a pattern to the frame with gold paint.

Finishing with a toothbrush

Paint the frame golden and leave to dry. Heavily dilute the black paint with water in a saucer. Place a toothbrush in the saucer and, wearing rubber gloves, spray paint onto the frame without tilting your face close. Decorate the frame with black paint to suit your taste.

The process of painting a picture frame is quite a creative and unusual activity. Using some techniques and secrets will help you update your baguette. You can decorate either a self-made frame or give a second life to an old product. In this article we will look at options on how to paint a picture frame with your own hands.

How to paint a photo frame for a picture?

If you purchased a new picture frame that is not painted, then you can transform it with your own hands. How to paint or restore a frame? To paint the product, use paint of a suitable shade, as well as bronze or silver.

Bronze powder

If bronze powder is used, then the following actions must be performed:

The baguette is covered with alkyd varnish or paint of the desired tone.
After this, bronze powder is applied to the sticky varnish.

Important! This procedure creates a spectacular appearance with a golden or bronze tint. But such a picture frame is not durable. Even the touch of your fingers causes the “goldenness” to fade. Therefore, it is necessary to apply an additional procedure in which the powder is covered with a layer of varnish. Repeated varnishing reduces the “golden effect”.

Bronze paint

To paint picture frames, use bronze paint, which can be purchased ready-made at hardware stores. In addition, you can prepare such paint yourself from bronze powder. To do this, mix bronze powder in alkyd varnish and drying oil. Even ordinary sunflower oil is suitable for this procedure.

Important! If you use varnish, it must be diluted with a solvent. The more diluted the varnish, the greater the “goldenness” of the paint. In this case, the coated surface of the frame is not strong enough.

Aged bronze

How to age a frame? A picture frame reminiscent of aged bronze looks very stylish and beautiful. This effect can be achieved by performing several sequential actions.

How to paint a DIY antiqued bronze picture frame:

First, the frame is given a dark shade, using a black-brown tint, brown-green tone and other color schemes.

Important! The paint used must have a matte finish.

After this we spray bronze paint from a can over the surface of the frame using sliding movements.

Important! As a result of this procedure, all protruding parts on the surface of the frame will be golden, and the depressions will remain dark in color. In this way, the effect of an old product from which the gilding has peeled off is created.

Wood imitation

Modern technological processes make it possible to create an imitation of valuable wood texture on the surface of the frame. In this case, you need to do the following:

The baguette is coated with a primer or treated with matte white paint.
Then the coloring pigment is diluted in the varnish to the desired color range. Mostly dark brown color with some shade is used. The composition of the prepared paint should have a translucent consistency.
Apply this paint to the surface of the frame with a brush with stiff bristles. Such a brush scratches the layer of applied paint and the white base is unevenly visible under it.

Important! To apply paint using this method, certain skills are required. The imitation of wood texture will depend on how the brush is positioned in the hand and what movements are used during application. A high level of skill allows you to independently come up with patterns of various wood textures.

Foil covering

There is another original painting method. To do this, the picture frame is covered with foil. How to decorate a picture frame with foil yourself:

Before this, the baguette is treated with glue or varnish.
While the coating dries, apply foil or gold leaf to it and press it with a sponge. The glued foil follows the relief of the frame and fits tightly to the baguette.
The resulting metal surface must be tinted with translucent paint.

Important! When using white aluminum foil rather than gold foil, a warm bronze tone is created by using grated lead from colored pencils. The lead must be ground to a powder state. This composition is rubbed into the metal surface of the frame with a brush with a hard base or a rag.

To decorate a baguette yourself, you need a broad imagination, creative thinking and versatile creativity. By experimenting and improvising, you can come up with new techniques, methods, and achieve interesting compositions in such a creative process.

How to age a picture frame?

The appearance of the items in the living room depends on the style of the interior. Thus, an interior in the style of Provence, Vintage and Shabby Chic involves decorating existing pieces of furniture in an antique style. The antique look is created by the furniture set, complemented by aged chairs, tables and chests of drawers.

Flower pots, photo frames, all kinds of vases, wall clocks, and mirror frames are decorated in this style. It is not at all necessary to purchase such things at the markets, since the objects in the apartment can be transformed beyond recognition on your own.

Let's look at how to paint a wooden antique-style picture frame with acrylic paint yourself.

For this we need:

ordinary wooden frame;
brown acrylic paint, which we use as a base;
white acrylic paint;
acrylic craquelure varnish;
brush.

The first stage is painting the frame with paint, which serves as the base

Basic paint is used for pronounced cracks. Therefore, the base paint and the paint that imitates a cracked surface are selected in contrasting colors. If we use a brown tone for the main color, then it will appear in the place of the cracks.

Important! We stock up on old newspapers so as not to stain the surface on which we will work. We place a picture frame on the newspapers.

Let's start painting the frame with acrylic paint. Cover with brown color in one layer. A single layer coating is quite sufficient, since the paint has a dense composition. If somewhere the layer is not quite thick, then the second coating will be crater varnish and white paint, which will safely cover any defects of the main brown background. Our frame should dry for about two hours. Products treated with acrylic paint dry very quickly.

The second stage is processing the picture frame with crater varnish

We treat the picture frame with varnish. The thickness of the layer determines what kind of cracks there will be:

If the applied layer is thin, the cracks will look small.
With a thick layer of varnish, the cracks will have clearly defined outlines.

After painting, leave the frame to dry for at least 2 hours.

Important! Crater varnish is a coating that creates cracks. It is not the varnish that cracks, but the paint applied on top of it. The crater component resembles an ordinary varnish.

The third stage is painting the baguette with white acrylic paint

Quickly paint the frame with white acrylic paint. As a result, cracks appear literally before our eyes. The paint should dry for about 2 hours. When the product dries, the cracks become clearly defined and the desired texture of the product is visible.

Important! It is very important to paint the frame over the entire surface, without lifting your hand, in one stroke. You can first practice processing any other material. If you pass the brush twice over the same place, the pattern of the crack is disrupted.

With the first layer it has already appeared, and if you go through it a second time, the next layer of paint will not crack. In addition, the secondary passage literally blurs the drawing.

How to paint a frame to suit a specific interior style?

Stylishly designed frames can emphasize the interior design, so you need to choose the color scheme of the baguette, depending on the style of the room. How to paint a picture frame with your own hands, depending on the style of the interior:

Wall decorations made from carved frames in dark gold or dark bronze tones complement fashionable glamorous interiors and are suitable for a classic option.
Vintage style is characterized by a composition that may contain aged frames, a candlestick and various accessories such as a mirror on a stand, figurines, boxes, and antique perfume bottles.
Pretentious frames painted in white, black and silver highlight the modern interior in the Fusion style.
In a minimalist interior, standard square frames in white or any color that contrasts with the walls look great.

Frame style depending on the genre of the painting

The frame is the “clothing” for the painting. The design of the baguette should not cover the composition of the canvas. But there are exceptions, mainly for small-sized paintings. The ideal option is to match the texture of the baguette and the style of the painting:

The texture of the frame can even repeat the characteristic strokes of paint or ornament used in the painting.
If the subject of the painting is simple, the frame should be in a simple style. And vice versa - the deep storyline of the picture should be formalized by an interesting design solution of the baguette.
Modern abstraction will not look beautiful in a lush gilded frame design. Therefore, for the simple, the simple serves, and the complex corresponds to the complex.

Important! A strict aluminum picture frame cannot reveal the airiness of the watercolor painting. But it will perfectly highlight a contrasting black and white photograph. And elegant picture frames made of light-colored carved wood are ideally combined with a delicate watercolor pattern.

A very beautiful and modern technique for painting a baguette. In this case, the image of the painting is continued in a frame into which it smoothly “flows.”
Also very impressive is the way of decorating a picture using two or more composite profiles of different thicknesses. In this case, it is important that the composite profile consists of frames of different widths. The inner baguette, located near the painting, plays the role of a passe-partout, placing emphasis on the painting itself, but at the same time emphasizing the beautiful design of the “external” frame.

Baguette color

If you are planning to paint a picture frame with your own hands, the color scheme also plays a big role. The color of the picture frame should be complementary and, accordingly, set off the picture image. In addition, the color scheme of the baguette implies a tone difference from the main color, either darker or lighter.

Important! It is necessary to take into account such a nuance that for paintings in cold colors a frame of a cold color is used, and vice versa - for a warm image a light-colored frame is suitable. However, there is an exception in which natural wood is combined with any shades.

Baguette width:

The larger the picture, the wider the image baguette should be. This correspondence favorably emphasizes the significance of the picture. Such compositions are placed at the central point of the interior and become accent elements.
Small paintings are decorated with wide frames. At the same time, compliance is maintained when the total area of the baguette is larger than the area of the image. This option looks very impressive. But you need to take into account that such a design requires a stylistic approach for other images in the room.
When choosing frames for small images, thin baguettes are often used. This choice looks stylish and modern, especially suitable for a whole group of paintings.

How to decorate a frame?

When decorating paintings, anything can be used as a material: wine corks, various cereals, fabric, old files of glossy magazines, all kinds of shells. Let's consider the most interesting options for decorating a frame at home.

Wine corks

This method of decorating a baguette is a modern hand-made art. To design such a frame, you need to take care of the base for the baguette:

Wine corks should be cut into thin slices.
Using acrylic paints, add the appropriate color. The result is a kind of cork buttons.
Now you need to turn on creativity and creative imagination to carry out the decoration. You need to glue cork buttons of various colors onto the main part of the picture frame.

Important! The frame can be designed in a multi-colored design, made in two colors or in a single color. In this case, taste, personal preferences and interior style play a role.

Groats

There is a very interesting option for decorating picture frames that are intended to be placed in the kitchen. How to decorate a picture frame with grains with your own hands:

We treat the base of the frame with PVA glue.
After this, generously sprinkle the surface of the baguette with the selected cereals. All kinds of cereals can be used. Barley, buckwheat, rice, and wheat are mainly used for decoration.

Important! The frame will look much neater if the base of the baguette is pre-treated with paint that matches the color of the selected grain.

Old magazines

Even from old glossy magazines you can design picture frames that create an amazingly beautiful interior:

Cut old glossy magazines into thin strips of equal size.
From the cut strips you need to wind tight tubes and fix them with glue.
You need to paste these tubes over the base of the picture frame, and the unusual design is ready.

Natural materials

For the decoration process, you can use natural materials:

Small branches of shrubs can be used to decorate outdated picture frames.
Large branches are suitable for unusual and creative design of a baguette.

Decoupage technique

You can also paste over the base of the picture frame with interesting fragments from old magazines and comics. To decorate the frame with your own hands, you can use special paper, which is characterized by a variety of storylines.

Textile

For true needlewomen, framing a frame becomes a real art, so beautiful fabric is also used. How to decorate a picture frame with fabric yourself:

We make the base of the baguette on a thick sheet of cardboard.
Cut it out along the contour lines.
Then you need to drape the surface of the frame with a beautiful fabric.

Important! There is an option for making a soft frame. To do this, use cotton wool or padding polyester, which is used to fill the baguette for the picture.
In this article, we offered you a lot of interesting ideas on how to paint a picture frame and then decorate the baguette. Choose those that appeal to you the most and which you have mastered in your practical decorating skills, then the result will certainly impress you!

Offers ideas for those who are constantly looking for original projects to creatively recycle things lying around into something new. Today these are old frames for paintings and photographs. The unconventional use of such frames is amazing! These are organizers, hangers, key holders, flowerpots, panels, chessboards and even furniture.

But, before you start implementing your idea, you need to transform the old picture frames. Think about your future idea, choose a color and style, select tools and materials, and decide on a technique. If the frame is wooden, then be sure to remove any remaining paint, burrs, or unevenness. Plastic frames just need to be washed and degreased. Sometimes it is enough to paint the frame with acrylic paint, but more often it turns into an interesting creative process: aging the surface, decoupage, mosaic, painting, applique, inlay and more.

trucsetbricolages

To decorate book shelves, glue finished frames to the shelf. Such decor will look very impressive on furniture if you glue them around the entire perimeter.

changeofsceneries.blogspot

Choose beautiful handkerchiefs, scraps of fabric or embroidered (knitted) motifs and decorate them with frames and glass. Depending on the selected images, such a composition will be appropriate in both the living room and the kitchen.

dwellingsanddecor.tumblr

An original shelf for cups, spices, tea or coffee. You can also place collectible cups or other items in this style.

kitchenisms

The tray is beautiful, simple and accessible even to a person who has never been involved in creativity and handicrafts. Don't forget to place a picture on the topic under the glass. It can be changed depending on the holiday.

nanaluluslinensandhandkerchiefs

The coffee table top is an old picture frame. For the legs, buy wooden balusters for stairs (sold in hardware stores). Under glass - all your imagination.

joann

Old picture frames are also popular as wall decor. They can be used either one color or multi-colored.

makelyhome

This composition with paper flowers also looks great as wall decor. But here you need to think about where such decor is appropriate. Or it will be a narrow hallway, a cottage, or a holiday decoration.

indulgy

In this example, the frame is used as a towel rack in the bathroom.

robolady.blogspot

Miniature key holder. The frame is aged. There are hooks at the top for placing keys. A very convenient thing.

hometalk

Classic - a TV in a good frame. Everything here should correspond to the chosen style.

buzzfeed

A desktop organizer consisting of a frame and strips of thick fabric. Here you can place pens and pencils, note paper and photographs, greetings to your loved one and wishes to the children.

wishfultinker.blogspot

Decorate the panels using old picture frames. Glue wallpaper, newspapers, or make drawings inside the frame using a stencil.

thehouseofsmiths

Set up a chessboard. Hang it on the wall. This will be a favorite place not only for children, but also for adults.

toysgadgets

ourfinehouse

Another organizer. Cover the cardboard with fabric and sew on pockets from old denim trousers. And you will get several pockets for pencils, scissors, knitting needles, hooks, rulers and other necessary handicraft tools. And also do Organizer for cosmetics.

decozilla

Create a cozy place for your shoes. This design is easy to move to any place. And most importantly, it does not take up much space.

Watch, learn, fantasize and create your own masterpieces and give new life to old things. Good luck everyone!

Patina is the natural process of aging and oxidation that appears on antique furniture and decorative items in the form of plaque or cracks. Patina does not spoil the item at all, but on the contrary, increases its value. It is an integral element of the vintage style; it can also be found in a baroque interior and even in a loft.

However, waiting for your chest of drawers or copper doorknob to age on its own can be a very long time, especially if your items do not have a rich past. But you want to admire the patina in the interior now, which is why we have selected several master classes for you on how to create almost real patina with your own hands! So, choose what you like best!

Imitation of patina using oxidizing paints

For this method, we will need special oxidizing paints with a patina effect, primer and some kind of base that you want to turn into a vintage item. This could be, for example, a photo frame or a ceiling rosette. The base itself can be wooden, plastic or metal - the material is not too important.

First you will need to coat the base with primer to help the paint adhere better. After this, carefully paint the entire surface with gold paint and, before it has time to dry, apply a turquoise-colored oxidizing agent with a thin brush. The oxidizing agent is applied in small strokes to those areas that you want to “age.”

After some time, it will begin to appear and create exactly the patina effect that we need. Finally, the frame should be varnished. See the visual sequence of actions

Imitating patina using conventional paints

If the previous option seemed a little complicated to you, or you simply don’t want to bother looking for such paints, then you can also use ordinary ones, at the same time using your imagination and sleight of hand.

Buy acrylic paints in bronze and turquoise with a metallic effect, as well as brushes or a sponge and regular water spray.

Using a brush or sponge (you can achieve a denser and more structured coating with a sponge), paint ordinary jars with bronze paint and let them dry thoroughly.

After this, mix the paint that imitates patina with water and relieve your soul, spraying it on the jars as you please. A modern decorative element with a taste of antiquity is ready! By the way, you can decorate almost anything in this way.

"Crushed" technique

If you want to patina something on a larger scale, then don’t be scared - it’s easier than it seems. An ordinary dark brown table can easily be turned into an antique one, covered with an almost real patina.

To do this, all you need is to mix paints of a suitable shade and arm yourself with crumpled paper or a towel.

Treat the entire surface and legs of the table in a “creased” style, let it dry thoroughly and - voila! - you are the owner of a real rarity. Well, almost real, shh.

Photo: happymodern.ru, ib-gallery.ru,liveinternet.ru, livemaster.ru, redouxinteriors.com