More "Gilt" and Frames for Heritage Photos

I am simply in awe of the terrific things the DT has done this month with the Anna Griffin Sierra kit that I assembled. Thank you, ladies, for such inspiring ideas!!!

I, too, had a little fun with the "gilt" and with framing - all in the same single page layout.

I had a little gilded resin piece in my kit - a leaf - that I used in combination with a hand-cut flower to accent the framed portrait of my great, great grandmother on her wedding day in 1873. These papers are terrific for vintage/heritage photos. This was an old tin-type that was in my grandmother's collection that I inherited. I certainly wasn't going to glue an "antiquity" like that into a scrapbook, so I took a photograph of it, doctored what I could of the rust spots using Adobe Photoshop, enlarged and printed it in 5x7 format.

The frame was the fun part. I used a technique that is taught in Anna Griffin educational classes. I cut a 5x7 oval frame from a piece of chipboard I had (Scrapbooks Plus always has extra pieces of chipboard you can buy for pennies). I cut a larger oval frame (5 1/2 x 7 1/2 ) from the wood grain paper. I covered the chipboard frame using Glue stick and attached the wood grain paper with a brayer to ensure no air bubbles and complete adherence. I then wrapped the wood grain paper around the back side of the chipboard, cutting the paper every 1/2 inch or so to ensure it had a smooth edge with no buckles - much like when you sew a sleeve on a dress. (I'm sure there is a sewing name for the technique that my mother could tell you that is beyond my vocabulary!)

Anyway - from there I hand cut some flowers and birds and attached them with pop dots here and there. You'll note that they are strategically placed to cover up and distract attention from the rust spots. The rest of the layout is just torn paper, ric-rac, title, and a small tag for journaling and the date.

If you have heritage portraits you want to scrap, this frame (and design) works well. Simple yet elegant, no matter what condition the photograph.