Wednesday Extra - "Handmade" Collage Frame by Nic

Look no further for some mid-week project inspiration!  Today we have a fabulous collage in an altered frame brought to us by the talented Nic Booth.

 

Over the years, I've enjoyed having a go at a variety of different crafts, cross stitching, quilting, painting and drawing, card making and of course scrapbooking.  Whatever medium it is I'm working in, I get a lot of enjoyment from the actual process of creating something handmade, so decided to create a picture using collage principles detailing some of my favourite crafting pastimes, that I could then hang on a wall in my home.

As I enjoy a number of different crafts, I wanted my collage to reflect this and used a variety of different materials.    The supplies I used for this project were: 8" x 10" wooden frame, acrylic paint in two shades, crackle glaze, aida material, thread, jillibean journaling sprouts in different sizes, corrugated flower, pin, maya road chipboard sewing images, bakers twine, brads, cardstock and patterned paper.

I began by altering the frame for my collage, I wanted to create an aged, distressed look so decided to use crackle glaze.  I used a cheap wooden 8" x 10" frame from Ikea and gave it several base coats with a duck egg blue acrylic paint.  When dry I then painted a crackle glaze medium (from my local DIY store) over the top and left this to dry overnight.  I then painted a layer of white acrylic paint on top to finish.  I found the appearance of the crackles can differ - the thicker the last layer of paint, the wider the cracks will be.

I then created the collage itself, using an offcut of cross stitch aida fabric as a base, which I handstitched around the edge and frayed slightly.

I used several journaling squares alongside corrugated cardboard and patterned paper for the individual pieces of my collage - each piece representing a favourite craft - paper, cross stitch, painting etc.

This type of project is great for using up all those odd bits and pieces left over from other projects.  I've had a packet of chipboard pieces full of sewing images in my stash for a while, so these were perfect to use on this project!  I heat embossed a couple of the chipboard images and painted the others.

Once I'd created all my individual pieces I then pieced them all together in an arrangement I liked and stuck them down onto the aida.  I then finished my project by backing the aida onto cardstock and a co-ordinating piece of patterned paper.

 

Thank you, Nic, for sharing such a fabulous project with us!  If you have a go at a similar frame, leave us a link in the comments.  We would love to see it :).  Have a great day, everyone!