How to Create a Stunning Vintage Collage Frame with Perfect Paints
Hi, friends! It's Walter here on the blog with you today with fabulous project that is based on an actual piece of the past. As you know by now, I love anything vintage. I live in the suburbs of Boston and enjoy visiting the SOWA Vintage Market in the South End of the city. There is a large area in the back area of the market where I can spend hours getting sources of creative inspiration. This area is filled with old publications, photographs, and post cards. Some of the post cards are old but never used; others have been written on and postmarked, and those are the ones that I love the most. Some aren't all that legible and some are in foreign languages. However, I love to read the ones in written in English. They provide a glimpse back into ordinary lives of a different day and age. I started to purchase some of the postcards as well as newspapers, magazines, books, and playbills. They are now well out of copyright and may be used in designs without any issue and I've started to digitize them so that they may be used without damaging the physical item.
One postcard in particular inspired today's project and I also included it as part of it. The woman on the postcard intrigued and captivated me. I wanted her to be shared and to create a project that helps create a story about her. The design that I created does just that. I used a very inexpensive wooden frame from the Dollar Store to create a collaged frame with a vintage Parisian color palette of pink with light marks of teal and some brown grunge from years of aging. Here's a picture of the actual postcard and finished project:
I used the following Perfect Paints products in this project:
Finnabair Art Basics 3D Gloss Gel
Distress Inks: Scorched Timber and Antique Linen
Park Lane Paperie Maps, Texts, and Ledgers paper pad
Prima Flowers Fleurs de Prima
Finnabair and Prima Mechanicals - Pocket Watches
Tres Jolie Kit Club Chipboard Leaves/Vines
Piece of chipboard
Mod Podge
Super Glue
Vintage Postcard
Directions
I started by printing out the digitized print of the postcard. I printed both sides and scaled them to size using my printer's app on my phone. I cut away the excess paper and then cut some pieces of chipboard to the same size. I wanted the photo to have a sturdy backing so I glued three pieces of chipboard together using Mod Podge. I then mounted the photo onto it and set it aside to dry.
Next up was the fun part . . . creating the collage frame! As previously mentioned, I used a very inexpensive frame from the Dollar Store. I wanted there to be a base layer on the frame in case the paper pieces didn't cover an entire area and achieved this by gluing down pieces of brown shipping paper using Mod Podge. Once dry, I trimmed the excess paper away with scissors.
While the frame was drying, I cut the selected pieces of decorative paper and the photo of the backside of the postcard into pieces of strips of varying sizes. I chose what to cut based on graphics and text that I felt would work best with the design and story. Items chosen included newspaper ads, postmarks, pictures of pocket watches from a catalogue, title of a page from a catalogue, musical notes from sheet music, and more. The story that I had in mind is that she is an immigrant from France living in New York City around the turn of the 20th century. She was an aspiring model and singer and used a recent advertisement from a musical she starred in as postcard to say hello to her family in Paris.
I then started to randomly glue down the strips and pieces onto the frame using Mod Podge. I continued with this until all of the space was full. Once dry, I used scissors to cut away the excess paper and then applied a final coat of Mod Podge.
It was now time to start adding color to the frame! I wanted to use a Parisian color scheme and add some vintage grunge to it. However, I wanted to make the paint transparent enough to see through it, so I made sure to mix the colors for the frame with Perfect Glaze Medium. I started with a base coat of Afterglow Shimmering Matte Acrylic on the frame. I let it dry and then added a second, and then a third coat.
Once happy with the color, I mixed together some Seaglass Shimmering Matte Acrylic and Perfect Glaze Medium and applied random highlights and streaks to the frame.
The final step to color the front of the frame was to add some vintage brown grunge in random spots to age it. To do this, I applied Espresso Shimmering Matte Acrylic to the frame using a baby wipe. The baby wipe allows for a splotchy application without any paint stroke lines, which makes it look more like dirt/grunge that has accumulated over time. I painted the sides and back of the frame with Vintage Mercury Shimmering Matte Acrylic to complete it.
I allowed the frame to dry and started to work on the embellishments for it. I used some of the Seaglass mixture to add some tarnish to the mini pocket watch. I then painted the chipboard leaves/vines with Vintage Patina Shimmering Matte Acrylic and allowed them to dry. The last step was to add some grunge to the leaves/vines and paper flower with Espresso Shimmering Matte Acrylic and a baby wipe.
The leaves/vines, pocket watch, and flower were all glued with Super Glue to finish the frame. I then ran some Scorched Timber Distress Ink around the image and used a blending brush to add some grunge to the photo with Antique Linen Distress Ink. I secured the image in the frame and voila . . . finished!
I couldn't be happier with how it turned out! The colors are just perfect and truly compliment the colors in the postcard. It's so very easy to turn such an inexpensive frame into a piece of art that showcases such a beautiful piece of history. You just never know where you're going to find inspiration. Keep looking in all of the nooks and crannies around us and find something amazing to use to create with and tell a story!
Thanks for spending some time on the blog with me today. Until next time . . . be well!
Comments