an instant "antique"

I've been looking for a while now for some old fashion patterns or prints, but haven't been able to find anything. So ... I decided to make my own! I used a technique I learned while doing arts and crafts as a kid, and combined it with some tricks I made up myself, and ended up with these! All from a white piece of computer printer paper.


First I dug around on Google for an image taken from a fashion magazine, preferably a French magazine from the 20's. I liked this image of the two women, but I was in LOVE when I found this classy lady in the fabulous cloak. I want that cloak for myself! Her enormous hat with the long feather is pretty fierce too:)

Once I found an image I liked, I blew it up to the size I needed for my frame, and turned the frame upside down to make sure it was the right size.

Then I just placed the paper directly over the computer screen and lightly traced the lines of it with a pencil, but you can print out the image and trace it over the print out. I was feeling lazy so I skipped this step.

Next, I went over the pencil lines with a black marker, coloring in the shaded areas darker. Please excuse the white paint all over my hands, I had been re-painting some old frames, but I'll post about that later.


Then I placed the frame down on the paper to trace out the lines of the frame.


Then I took a candle and rubbed it thoroughly over the paper, especially the edges of the line where the frame will be.

The next part was a little scary, but I took a lighter, and burned the edges. You'll want to trim the paper down to about half an inch away from the traced line of the frame. Then, set little sections on fire at a time, blowing it out as soon as it gets to the line. This may take awhile because you have to such small sections at a time, but it ends up looking really cool!


Next, I crumpled up the paper, then unfolded it over and over and over. The combination of the candle wax and the worn-out paper makes it start to feel like leather. It's very cool! That's the part I learned in kindergarten. We covered brown lunch bags with brown crayon and then did the crumple/unfold technique to make "treasure maps". Of course, we didn't do the fire part to wear out the edges:) And I figured candle wax would work as well as crayon, and it did.

Next I went out and grabbed a handful of mulch and rubbed it all over the picture. I even did another crumple/unfold round or two with the mulch inside! Here's what it ended up looking like. I put it on top of another piece of printer paper so you could see the dramatic difference that some candle wax, a few matches, some mulch and a lot of crumpling can make in just a few minutes!


I was digging around for some card stock to stick behind them, when I noticed that the back of the frames had a cool, dark cardboard. I placed the papers on it, and it looked awesome! So I didn't put anything back there, just put the back of the frame on and voila!


Here they are at home on a shelf. I picked these fashion images from a very old French magazine, but you could do anything. I also thought of doing an antique key, a sailboat, or illustrations of dogs and cats from an old children's book.


And don't forget, you can always click on the pictures for a closer look! I recommend clicking on the second to last one (it's also at the very top), the one that has the frames lying flat on a white surface. That picture has the most detail.