Anna’ Stampin’ Cave – Inside The Lines Altered Photo Frame

In my project today I decided to create altered photo frame with beautiful, Inside The Lines Designer Series Paper. With an ever-growing trend in adult colouring books, this paper is just spot on.

I don’t know about you, but I love these bold botanical designs. They coordinate with Dragonfly Dreams Stamp Set & Dies, but you can use them on their own too. Colour them in with markers, inks or watercolour pencils – it’s fun and very therapeutic…or leave them black&white. Whatever tickles your fancy.

The frame is from Ikea and is called Virserum. It measures 7-1/2 x 9-1/2″ (19 x 24 cm) and comes with inside mount, hence I only needed 4″x 6″ (10 x 15 cm) piece of DSP to fit inside.

I’ve chosen this lovely, jungle-like design and cut it into 4″x 6″ rectangle. Because I was aiming for a subtle look I decided to watercolour my piece.

Bear in mind this is not watercolour paper so you can’t add too much water to it.

For the foliage, because it’s such a small area, I’ve used Stampin’ markers: Pear Pizzazz, Wild Wasabi, Old Olive, Garden Green and Always Artichoke. First, I scribbled my markers on a craft mat. I also spritz some water on my craft mat, next to the markers. I did it deliberately, to have more control of how much water I use. Next, I took dry aqua painter, picked up some water with its brush, next picked up some colour from the mat and started colouring my foliage. I was adding more colour and more water to the mat when needed. There are 4-5 layers of colour on leaves, each layer added when the first one was dry.

To colour in the rest of the image, I’ve used ink pads as my palettes.

I’ve used Soft Sky for sky and dragonfly (with a little dab of Island Indigo marker). Mountains are coloured with Smoky Slate.

For the tree trunk, I’ve used Tip Top Taupe ink pad. To add some highlights I’ve used Whisper White Craft Ink (yes, I’ve used it with aqua painter too).

Polypores or conks (I’m not sure how they are called in the UK so forgive me if I’m wrong) are watercoloured with a mix of Sahara Sand, Crushed Curry and again some white craft ink for highlights.

For the final touch, I’ve added White Perfect Accents as dew drops (one on the sky is hiding a little boo-boo). And as a must, I had to add some shimmer with clear of Wink of Stella to the dragonfly, mountain tops, and polypores. Sadly it’s really hard to capture this lovely shimmer on photos. But now to the frame.

Believe it or not, this is my first ever altered photo frame. I knew I want flowers, but for a long time, I couldn’t decide on a colour. First, I wanted to go with quite a feminine look, so pinks and oranges. But once I had all my flowers ready I didn’t really like it. Typical haha. But no worries, I will use them to something else. And then I had this revelation: how about Very Vanilla?! Genius!

I die-cut oodles of flowers and leaves from Very Vanilla and Vellum cardstock. Arranged them around the frame and once I was happy with the placing, I adhered them with glue dots.

But as you may know me already, nothing can be too easy haha And when I looked at my frame something was missing, in my humble opinion. Oh right, it was too ‘clean’, too ‘white’. I needed some ‘controlled mess’.

I pressed Pear Pizzazz and Soft Sky ink pads next to each other on the craft mat and spritz it with water. I covered the glass with a piece of paper, and using a clean brush I added random and less random splatters to the flowers and leaves. And I have to say I love it now! And I hope you like my little project too.

I also want to add this project to the #071 Theme Challenge over at Global Design Project Challenge Blog. This weeks theme is ‘3D Or Off The Page’

As always, if you wish to purchase any of products I have used, simply click the images below to go directly to my online store.

Thank you for stopping by and have a blessed day!