Christmas in July: Altered Picture Frame

I actually made this for my niece's housewarming gift but altered picture frames make wonderful Christmas gifts too!  When choosing papers and embellishments, be sure to color coordinate with at least one room in your gift recipient's home.  Of course it's easy enough to go with a theme too like Baby's First Christmas.

So I started with a Bare Essentials photo frame from Creative Imaginations:

These frames just happen to be 12" x 12"!





Convenient!  So you could cover the frame with one piece of 12" x 12" paper and cut out the 5" x 5" opening for the photo.  I wanted to use some coordinating papers from Upsy Daisy:

This is the London Blush Collection.






 I decided to do a sort of  Log Cabin layering around the photo opening.  I began on the left side with a 12" x 3.5" strip. I continued along the bottom with an 8.5" x 3.5" strip.  Next, I did the upper panel with a matching 8.5" x 3.5" strip; I could have easily continued along the right side but decided I liked the way this looked better. I finished up on the right side with a 5" x 3.5" strip:

Kind of like strip quilting!






So once you like your strip placement, just glue the strips down:

And then a little distressing doesn't hurt!  I used Tim Holtz Distress Inks and a cosmetic wedge to blend those white edges using Tattered Rose.

Once the distressing was done, here's what I had:

Now for some embellishment!

I pulled out a bunch of embellishments that coordinated with the colors in the London Blush papers.  In the end, I used one of those new Prima pearl and roses swirl in brown, some crocheted lace and a package of Prima's Holiday Lights platinum birds:

The finished frame!

Here's a close up!








Start to finish this took me about an hour and a half.   My niece has recently gotten engaged so I will be putting one of their engagement photos in the frame.  All in all, I'm happy with this project.  And by the way, Upsy Daisy's London Blush collection papers and rub-ons are available at Flamingo Scraps at a drastically reduced price!  Thanks for playing along with me!