A Joy Frame Tutorial with Sizzix

Hello Sweeties! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, surrounded by good food, good friends, and the love of family!

I prepared my big turkey dinner last Sunday while Pete was home. So yesterday I was free and easy, and enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving meal out with friends. No cooking, no dishes, and no work for any of us…. just lots of laughter and good cheer with those I hold dear.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I’m trying to really get going on my holiday projects. Today I have a sweet handmade gift idea and tutorial to share with you, made with the adorable new Tim Holtz Alterations Stacked Snowflakes die for Sizzix.

I love giving handmade gifts at the holidays, and being the holiday home nut that I am, my favorite gifts are home decor pieces, like this little frame. I found this sweet silver frame for under a dollar at my local thrift store. Talk about a score! Then with a bit of paper and a pretty hand-stitched fleece snowflake, I was able to put together a quick and easy heartfelt holiday gift…. practically for free.
I had so much fun making the shabby background with my Distress inks and paint, and am tickled I could incorporate one of my old childhood loves, hand embroidery. If you’re interested in learning more, I’ve put together a tutorial for all the steps. Let’s take a look.

Start by measuring your frame opening and cutting a piece of paper to fit. Since we’ll be working with lots of paint and Distress products, you’ll want to choose a nice sturdy paper, such as manila cardstock or watercolor paper. I love having a bit of design to my background, so I went with a patterned paper from Authentique’s holiday collection, Believe. I’ve found that the nice thick linen texture to Authentique’s papers hold up well for mixed media projects.

Drip a bit of white acrylic paint over your background paper, and brush out with a foam brush using up and down swipes. Don’t try to cover the entire paper… just randomly brush the paint out, leaving some spots covered and some uncovered. Allow the paint to dry completely.

Dab a bit of Weathered Wood Distress Stain onto a non-stick craft sheet and mist the stain with water.

Drag the painted paper through the stain/water mix. The painted areas will resist the stain, whereas the unpainted areas will absorb the color.

Using a ink blending tool, apply a small amount of Salty Ocean and Peacock Feathers Distress Ink to the paper. You can spritz the paper lightly with water to help blend the color, if needed.

Tear bits of dictionary or book paper, apply tacky glue or glue stick to the back of the torn papers, and adhere them to the background paper. Sand over the text print using a sanding block. I like to see the text, without focusing on any of the words, so sand as needed to slightly obscure the print. Curl back any loose edges, too. That just adds to the unique texture of the finished piece.

Add additional Distress inks, as desired. I went back over a few areas with Salty Ocean and Antique Linen ink.

Add a few random swipes of Broken China Distress Paint. Mist lightly with water to blend, then allow paper to dry fully, or speed up the process with a heat tool.

Stamp sentiment onto the bottom right corner using Jet Black Archival Ink. Place paper into the frame.

Now it’s time to die cut some snowflakes. I love adding the soft touch of fabric and fleece to my projects, so I used coffee-stained Therm O Web Stitchn’Sew Interfacing. I absolutely love the shabby aged finish of soaking my felt and fleece in a bit of coffee and coffee grounds. You can see the variation in staining and the bits of grounds which remain after soaking. Of course if you are going to soak your fabric, make sure you let it dry completely before die cutting.

Run your fleece through your die cutting machine using this standard die cutting sandwich for Bigz dies: Standard Cutting Pad, die, fabric or paper, second Standard Cutting Pad.
*Note: Here’s a tip I use when cutting fabric with lots of fibers, like this fleece interfacing…. place a thin piece of scrap paper, like this mailer ad, between your die and the fabric. That will keep all the tiny fibers from getting embedded in the die.

Die cut the same snowflakes again, this time from cardstock.

Cover the cardstock snowflakes completely with glue stick, then adhere to the fleece snowflakes. This gives the fabric a bit of extra stability. Now you can add embroidery if you wish, or just leave them as is. Either way looks great!

Adhere both layers of die cut snowflakes to the frame opening using foam adhesive, then top with a pearl button. Final touch…. paint a small amount of clear Stickles glitter glue onto the background.

Hope I’ve given you a few quick and easy holiday gift ideas to try. Thanks so much for stopping by. Wishing you all a wonderful day!

Supplies:
Tim Holtz Alterations Stacked Snowflakes Bigz Die by Sizzix
Patterned Paper: Authentique Believe Collection
Dictionary Paper: The Kraft Outlet
Stamp: Stampin’Up
Fleece: Therm O Web Stitchn’Sew Interfacing
Ranger Ink Products: Distress Ink ( Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, Antique Linen) ; Distress Paint ( Broken China) ; Star Dust Stickles ; Jet Black Archival Ink
Paint: Delta
Floss: DMC
Vintage Button
Adhesive: Therm O Web SuperStik Glue Stick, 3D Adhesive Squares