So, after remembering how...

To weave the gum wrappers again, I needed a project to use them up. This is what I came up with. Quite pleased with myself. I mean.. cool idea huh? Who else would come up with a frame? Then my daughter came home. It seems she's seen these everywhere. Talk about an immediate deflate... anyway, I'm going to share with you the process of creating this frame regardless. Along with the things I won't be doing for the next ones.

The first thing I did was to decide what size photo I was going to make the frame for. A 4" x 6" snapshot seems a good choice since we all use those pretty consistently. So, to do that, I am going to need an overall (outer dimension) size of about 5" x 7". At this point, the smart thing for me to do would be to run over to Michaels and get one (or a dozen, cause you know once I start I can't stop) of the unfinished wooden frames they have for about a buck... but NOOOOOOooooo... Instead, I used the heavy cardboard back of one of the watercolor paper tablets I had cut up for the recent journals (silly idea number 1). I cut one back (with no opening), one front (with an opening) and one stand. Enlarge the photo to the right and you can see the pieces.

I also cut three strips that are about a quarter of an inch that I will be using as spacers later. Now, I have a mat cutter, so that made doing this very simple. If you want to use a heavy cardboard to make your frame and you don't have a mat cutter, be very careful. I've cut a finger or two in my time when using an X-acto Knife or box cutter... I'm just sayin'.


When you have your pieces cut out the next step is to cover them with printed pages. You could lay them over the piece of the frame and carefully glue them down, but where's the fun in that? I decided that, since I had all of these strips of paper left over where I had cut the "gum wrapper" shapes that I'd weave a back. (That was "silly idea" number two.) Finding the center back of the frame, I glued strips all across.

Then, I folded those strips over and began weaving. Yup, just like making a pie crust top... (what was I thinking???). If you do this, you have to glue all along the way so that when you attach the stand later it is going to be stable. The finished piece would have been a tad more impressive had I used a t-square to carefully draw parallel lines for the strips to carefully follow. But, I didn't, and the end product is a tad caddywompus... but you'll see that later.


Once all of that was woven and carefully glued down I sat it aside to dry and started on the front. When the frame is finished you will want a wee bit of space that you can slide the photo into, so the first thing to do is glue the three "spacer" strips into place. Glue them across one long side and both short sides.




Cover (what will be) the front with strips of pages and set it aside to dry as well.

In the next post I'll be sharing more about finishing up the frame.