Framing a new art print

We recently took a family trip to Washington, DC (Did you miss me? I missed painting and sharing what I've done with you!). While there, we were fortunate to be able to tour the White House. What a surreal experience! We actually walked through all these rooms we hear so much about -- the red room, the green room, etc. (they were much smaller than I thought they would be!). At the visitor's center, my husband and I picked up a print of a painting of the White House by Guy Carleton Wiggins for a buck! While I love original art, I also love a good print. But now I had the dilemma of framing it and finding a place to hang it. I rarely purchase something without having a pretty good idea of what I'll do with it, but I made an exception for this lovely memento. I knew I could find a place. Before going out and purchasing a frame I -- you guessed it -- shopped my storage room. I found this frame that's the perfect size.

 

 But you can see the paint is scratched up a bit.

 

That was fixed with one easy coat of black spray paint, which I already had on hand (You do, too, right? Everyone needs a can of black spray paint on hand!).

 

Now it looked like new, but it was kind of boring. So I decided to use gold craft paint (I also had this on hand) to "fancy" it up.  My first idea was to draw a line of gold through the decorative groove on the frame. But as I started doing that, wiping off the excess as I went, I realized I really liked the way the gold looked rubbed into the wood grain. So I quickly sprayed it with black again to cover the gold in the groove (that's the great thing about projects like this -- if you don't like how it's coming out, you can simply spray paint it again). Then I used my finger to to rub gold paint into the grain of the wood. I wiped off some of the excess because I didn't want it to be shiny gold. I wanted a more subtle look. The gold makes the frame work better with the photo I paired the piece with, also.

 

Voila! A beautiful piece framed nicely for our living room that cost nothing more than the $1 for the print, and took very, very little time.

  

 

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