DIY Tutorial – Upcycle Broken Frame

I love to salvage ‘stuff’.  I, almost always find inspiration ‘especially’ in broken items.  Unfortunately that also means, that alot of broken items don’t land up in the rubbish bin immediately in my home. (as they should) eg Broken mugs are stored to be used as mosaic material

Would you believe this frame was an empty shell with no base/back or glass infront and now — Ta da !!

This frame was found in one of my frame piles and I decided to FINALLY work some of my magic on it.

I absolutely love the HOPE sign below, but one of our new fosters (kitten) jumped high enough, to break it.

Like I said, its not THAT EASY for things to be chugged in the bin – – –   at my place !!

(the fact that my husband and sons are fed up of my habit is another story for another day though  )

Long story short –

I decided somehow the HOPE sign and the frame would look good together. Here’s a simple tutorial of what followed.

The frame did not need to be sanding, so I proceeded with two coats of acrylic paint.

Found this light weight, foam backing for the base/back. The frame had hooks intact on the back so I measured the black foam and cut to fit in the back of the frame.

For the background, I got some cardboard and painted colors – colors that are generally out of my comfort zone eg yellow, purple, blue !

I applied some DAP instant Grab adhesive to glue the two broken spaces on the HOPE letters.

Let it rest for atleast 12 -14 hours.

Having painted stripes of cardboard, I went on to roughly place the stripes on the black base foam board to see how the pattern looked.

I decided, I did not want a symmetrical pattern and wanted a random distressed look . I snipped the excess cardboard which had exceeded the black foam’s border.

I measured and placed smaller pieces of cardboard on the empty edges

Then I hot glued all the pieces along with regular PVA glue for additional strength.

Finally I placed the frame over and adhered it from behind.

• I wanted to give a 3D effect to the sign hence I added a piece of cardboard on the back of the HOPE sign at two places and hot glued the sign to the colorful background.   That way, it gives a popping out impression.
• I have added random thin golden paint strokes to conceal the spots where it had broken – in turn giving it a more marble-like effect.
• It is necessary to give one coat of modge podge or varnish on the entire frame and background – so as to make it more durable and it will be easy to clean it in future too (from dust etc since it does not have a glass covering)

I absolutely love how this turned out.  Did you like it too ??

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