For those who love to craft but feel bad about buying hundreds of scrapbook papers, ribbons, and stickers, there is a way to be creative and avoid frivolous overuse of paper materials. If you use images and designs from old magazines for decoupage, your crafts don’t have to be dull or cause harm to the environment.

You will need:

• 1 bottle of Mod Podge, matte
• an unfinished wooden picture frame (any size)
•  foam paint brush
•  pair of scissors
•  cup of water
•  hot glue gun and refills
• 1 foam stamp of your choice
• 1 small bottle of an acrylic paint of your choice
• 3 wooden twigs
• 5 inches of ribbon (any color)

Prep (30-90 minutes)

Brainstorm on a color scheme you’re aiming for. To go with a “green” theme, I like to do natural, warm colors that you’d find in nature. Flip through your magazines and find bold images of grass, solid shades of sky blue, and shadows of brown trees with their falling leaves. A couple of organically written and meaningful words are also good to add to your decoupage for depth. To make your eco-friendly picture frame have a bit of glam, cut out images of graphic glitter or chandeliers.

Once you’ve gone through and found images you like, tear the whole page out. There’s no need to cut anything out nicely because the next step is to cut them all in relatively equal strips. Depending on the size of your frame, cut the section of the images you want to be a part of the composition into strips approximately 2 inches tall and 5-6 inches long.

The last step of prepping is to paint the sides and back of the frame with whatever color goes along with your color scheme. If I’m doing a rich, warm palette, a deep purple is always nice. You could also completely bypass this step and leave the wood in its organic, raw state. Also, pick out the kind of foam stamp you’ll want on your frame. An ivy leaf, swirl or damask design looks best. You’ll also need to pick out the color you’ll want the stamp to be in. The stamp looks better the more it blends in with the color palette. You don’t want it to be an obvious stamp but more of an added depth within the same shades. For the example (pictured below), I picked up the shimmer in my frame with a silver stamp.

Article Author: Autumn Huffman

I'm a junior professional writing major with a minor in art history at the University of Oklahoma. I like to think my writing reflects my background in fine arts whether it be fiction, a review or a journalistic piece. …

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