What Our Crew Would Do- Sami

Hey Ladies! Its Sami from the AF store. This is my first blog post with The Wood Connection. Scratch that, this is my first blog post. EVER! I’m so excited to show you my project I decided to call “One STUD of a Frame”

 

 

That’s right! Here’s your step by step tutorial on how to add a little bit of glam to your frame! Some things you might need if you want to be successful are….

1. The Frame. (Duh!)

2. Some foam brushes

3. Paint for those foam brushes

4. Handy dandy wire cutters

5. A manly hammer

6. Small nails

7. A ruler or piece of paper and a pencil

8. And some shimmery thumbtacks (I found mine at Smith’s)

 

 

It may seem like a lot. But do not fret, it’s easy! Fist start off by removing the glass from the frame, set it aside, you don’t want to get paint on it.

 

I decided to use two colors of paint to give the frame a little bit more dimension. So if you opt to do the same now would be the time to grab your main color of paint and one of those foam brushes. Paint the face of the frame and the inside edge (by where the glass would sit). I did a few coats to get it to the color I wanted.

 

After you let the paint dry completely grab your ruler or straight edged object (I just used a piece of paper folded in half) and a pencil! K this step is really important. DO NOT FORGET TO DO THIS. Well at least if you want your thumbtacks to be straight. Take your straight edge and move it back from the inside of the frame and draw a straight line with your pencil. Move it back just far enough so if you were to put the middle of the thumbtack on the line the edge of it would line up with the edge of the inside of the frame. Do this on all four edges and make sure they look even.

 

Next you are going to want to get the wire cutters and your thumbtacks. Because the MDF wood is so hard I had to use pilot holes in order to get them in. I found it was easier to do that if the needle part of the thumbtack was a tad bit shorter than how it came in the package. So you will want to cut it down, not completely though. I cut about half of the end off at most.

 

 

After you have a few thumbtacks cut grab your hammer and small nails to show off those nice biceps we all get from painting and crafting so much! Use the small nail and hammer to hammer a pilot hole for the thumbtack right along the line that we drew earlier (you will only want to do one pilot hole at a time)

 

 

After you have your first pilot hole grab one of those cut thumbtacks and place the needle part of it in the pilot hole and hammer it in with the hammer. You will alternate between these two steps (maybe these three steps, if you don’t want to cut all your thumbtacks at the beginning) once you’ve made it all the way around the inside edge of the frame you are almost done! YAY!!

 

Time to grab that main color of paint again! After I was done hammering I had mucked up the frame a little bit so I just went over it with the paint again where it was needed. Don’t worry about getting paint on the tacks, it will come off with something simple like a Clorox wipe, even if the paint is dry.

Now you can get that second color of paint and another brush. Use this color to paint the outside edge of the frame. If one or the other color gets on each other don’t worry, just wait for it to dry and touch it up a little bit.

 

Let the paint dry, throw a pretty picture in with your glass you set aside earlier, and VIOLA! You now have “One Stud of a Frame!” Hope you enjoyed ladies!! Happy crafting!!