Giving an Old Frame a New Look

What’s better than “shopping” your home for new decorating items for a space? Shopping your parents’ home!

My parents are going through a redecorating phase and a lot of rooms in their home are getting a facelift. Which means they have a lot of decor that they aren’t using anymore. That gives ME the perfect opportunity to get some free stuff!!

That’s how I got my hands on this beauty.



Of course there was a print in it but I only needed the frame. I don't know what to do with the print, it's from when we visited Nova Scotia and is from a local artist, I don't want to throw it out...

It would be a shame to let that beautiful detailed frame collect dust in their basement, don’t you think?



Only thing was that it was too dark for what I wanted to do with it. I knew I wanted it in my bedroom where the walls are dark purple and it would barely show.

So I decided I’d give my hand at spray painting it. I wanted to keep the golden/bronze details, but I wasn’t too sure how to go about doing that... I thought that if I could spray paint it lightly and immediately wipe it off with a wet rag, the golden details could show through. It seemed like that's how the frame was made to begin with, if you look closely. I stared at it quite some time before settling with that hypothesis haha!

So that’s what I did.

Note: Since then, I’ve found this wonderful tutorial from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom that explains an other way to do this, so check it out if you're interested in painting a detailed frame like mine.

I set myself up outside in the backyard of our apartment building. I put down a plastic drop cloth, grabbed my white spray paint and tentatively tried to paint this thing.



I sprayed a section at a time, not too thick, just enough to cover it up a bit.



I liked how it wasn't super white and the brown from underneath was toning it down.



Then with a wet rag, I just wiped. If you’re gonna do it my way, you will want to squeeze out the water as much as you can, or else it leaks and dilutes the paint. And you have to work quite fast, the thin layer of paint I applied dried super fast!



You'll learn quickly enough that you don't need to be afraid to remove too much paint, the rag doesn't get much deeper than the surface of the details.



It maybe wasn't the best method, but I still like the end product.



Sure there are sections that are darker than others (where I squeezed water from the rag and it kinda just diluted the paint in that area...), but really not that noticeable unless you know about it, am I right?



I might still redo it the way Scattered Thought of a Crafty Mom did it with the stencil paint cream, but for now I am quite happy with it.



I would've liked to be able to wipe off more so the bronze would show more, but it really dried too quickly for that.



I think I had finally mastered this technique once I got to the sides (which I almost forgot to do! haha!), it's so much more even throughout and the bronze shows through nicely.



Oh and this poor guy got a bit of a paint treatment too, I guess I had it to close by... Note to self: always put everything else away, far far away from the painting zone!!



I'm pretty proud of myself. I was SO scared of messing it up, but it turned out well in the end.



I'll share with you what I did with it next time. It took me a month to finally decide exactly how to use it. I knew what I wanted to put in it, but it seemed just a bit off at first. Finally got to finishing it this weekend, and I'm super happy about it!

Stay tuned...

Edit: Part 2 is up!





I party at these parties.