Paper Mache Picture Frame
Tailor Your Frames to Your Pictures

To match the theme of the painting itself, she decorated the frame with real sand.

This is a really simple style of frame to make and it looks great when it's finished. Because it's on an acrylic painting there is no glass or mounting board involved, which makes it much simpler to make.

Annemarie started by cutting out a rectangle from a large piece of cardboard to a size that would fit her painting. She then used wadded up newspaper to pad it out and give it a nice, three-dimensional, rounded out shape.

Once that was done, she began with the paper mache. She used the strip method with newspaper and white PVA glue as her materials of choice.

Allowing it to dry between every three layers, she added a total of nine layers altogether. This made a good solid frame that will probably last as long as the painting.

For the decoration she used sand from her parent's farm road. It was very easy to do. After covering the entire frame in a thick coat of undiluted PVA glue, she buried the frame in a pile of sand and left it to dry outside in the sun.

Initially some of the sand fell off, so she added a second layer of glue and repeated the process until it was very well covered. This not only gave it a great effect as a decoration, it also really hardened the frame and made it feel nice and solid. On the down side, it does also make it quite heavy, but not so heavy that it's likely to fall off the wall.

To finish it off she gave it three layers of a good quality matt varnish.

The painting is now hanging in her sister's lounge in South Africa.

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