The Stampman Altered Challenge and Blog Hop

I made this picture frame for a friend who is cat mad, black cats in particular, but it is perfect for entering into The Stampman Altered challenge.

It started off looking like this

This is from a set of Brenda Pinnick frames and tags that I bought from good ole QVC. They have largely been sitting unused in a box, but I wanted to frame the Dufex foil print I had of this cat and had no photoframes, then my mate Vix put a post up about the Stampman bloghop and altered challenge that was coming up so off I went.

I took the first, and largest, of those hideous brown frames (sorry BP but the designs are not that nice) and coated it in several coats of plain white acrylic paint. First I had to sand it down as it’s a coated chipboard and it didn’t want to take the paint until I did. I sanded it down between each coat to so that the acrylic would have something to stick too. Several coats later and tearing my hair out I finally got the pattern covered.

Next I got my trusty Cosmic Shimmer paints and set to colouring in so that it would co-ordinate with the cat picture. There are lots of lovely poppies in the pic so I went for red. That also took several coats. Ever tried watching paint dry, LOL, boring or what!

Finally I had it the shade I wanted and covered about as well as I thought I would get it.

I then stamped a freebie stamp I got from one of the papercraft mags months ago. An annoying little acrylic stamp that never had any ruddy stick no matter how many times I washed it in liquid! Eventually I had to glue it to an old spare block! Anyhow it’s quite a sweet image and makes a lovely border. So I stamped all around the frame in black and embossed it.

I stuck little sparkly gems into each flower centre in alternate colours of green and blue.

When I had trimmed up the cat image, horrors, it was too small for the frame! This was turning into one pain in the backside project. Anyhow I put me finking cap on and came up with the idea of a piece of silver foil to go behind it, as the dufex image is a foil one. I ran some craft foil through my BS with a texture plate and stuck the image to it. It was then okay to go in the frame.

There were no backs for these frames in the kit, because I guess they were meant to be used on scrapbooking pages and the like, so I took a small solid one and used it to make a stand, and just covered the back of the frame with a piece of card from one of those board backed envelopes that I had had something sent to me in. Some times I am so grateful I horde rubbish!

I was quite pleased with the result, cos it was kind of a make do and mend idea but made a pretty gift.