just paint it white: corbels

Monday, 2 July 2012

empty frame love (mini guest room post #2)

Before blogging, I wasn't really aware of the possibilities of empty frames.

More often than not I was looking for pictures and prints to go in the frames I had, rather than thinking of alternative ways to use them.

The most inspirational picture I found is this one from my dear friend Olga's (originally from Houzz ).

I love the frames pushed up against each other. It's so effective, it looks like a single piece of artwork.

I was also inspired by other things being framed, especially plates, and so I came up with this !

The frames were all given to me except the one on the bottom left, which I found for £1. The middle one is really good quality. The top two are pretty good, whereas the bottom frames are really cheap, but I like the different golds and finishes.

I've had everything else for years. The corbels are from TKMaxx. The little mirror is from Spain and the black scraperboard I did when I was young. You can still see the grid which I drew to help me mark it out.

It was just a test piece - I never scraped a board again.

My grandmother is sitting in the middle of the front row in a photo from her schooldays.

The sauce boat is Spode's Fleur-de-Lys.

The prints are just stuck on canvases which I painted and aged.

The piece at the top was also from TKMaxx, and I recently gilded it. Sorry, no tutorial, I was impatient. When I first did it, the gold was a bit garish. I painted grey all over it to give it that antique, dusty finish and now I'm pretty pleased with it.