Finished Cheap Frame

I finally finished it. I had to do some more problem solving along the way, but overall, I'm pretty pleased.

The frame ended up looking pretty decent. Certainly not sleek, but I think that adds to the character of it. It looks homemade but I like it!

 Honestly the hardest part for me was figuring out how to work with the shoe polish. At first it would wipe off too easily, so I waited. But think I waited too long and I had to really scrub to get it off. The idea was to put black shoe polish all over it, and then wipe it off to get the desired "antique" look. In the end I was happy with it though.

 After I glued the background to the frame, I had some issues. This is a terrible picture, but it is the best my phone could do. I had to use hot glue so it would set quickly, but by the time I got the glue all the way around, it had started to solidify on the other side. I had already started with a somewhat crooked frame from the warping of the poster board and texture of the plaster. So adding the hot glue issue meant that my background was not exactly sealed around the edges and you could see daylight between the frame and the background.

 

To solve the problem, I taped around the edges on the back with clear tape. Then I spray painted it black to make sure that if anything was showing around the edges, it was black. I thought that was actually pretty smart of me ;-)

 

Here is the finished product. I need to mount a hanger on the back somehow and then I'll be able to add it to our decor at our house...until I need to take it down and bring it back as an example the next time I do this project with kids.

Car Sickness Therapy

We did a lot of traveling over the holiday. While in Lincoln, my body had apparently had enough of being in the car and I got really carsick on the way to visit some relatives. It took a while to get my stomach calmed down, but I had some great nurses.

There were three little kittens at their house that accompanied me on my short walk while trying to get some cool/fresh air to calm my stomach. After about half an hour of nausea, I finally decided just to lay outside on the porch and these little guys made sure they kept my belly warm. All three of them were on there, but one jumped off when I disturbed his seat while trying to get my cell phone out of my pocket to take a picture.

Apparently they were great nurses, because after they laid on my stomach for a while, I finally felt better ;-)

Shortage of $$ = Creativity

What do you do when you find out last-minute that a vital piece of material for a project is not an option because it costs too much? You get creative (like any good farmer/teacher knows).

I was planning on starting a project with my 8th graders today and went into the school office this morning to see if the cheap black frames I had ordered had come in yet. To my surprise they weren't even ordered because they apparently went up in price sometime between when I requisitioned them and when they were about to be ordered. Never good.

I had to scramble to come up with a solution but I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished with the materials I had available in my art room.

 

Step 1: Cut a frame out of poster board that is the desired size.

Step 2: Wrap that frame with plaster strips to reinforce and harden it.

 Step 3: Since I also don't have the money to purchase fancy letters, I printed the font I liked at the desired size, traced it onto poster board and then wrapped it with plaster as well.

 This is just a quick indication of what the goal is for the project.

 Step 4: To provide the frame with additional structure, I hot glued craft sticks around the edges of it.

 Step 5: Then I taped another frame of the same size to the back side of the original frame.

Step 6: I will wrap the entire frame with plaster strips and they will dry to hopefully give me a hollow, but somewhat hard, frame.

Step 7: I will spray paint it a gloss black and then continue working on what will be displayed inside of the frame.

So, for now, I think I have the problem solved. I'm sure another set of problems will come up tomorrow though. Gotta roll with the punches ;-)