Love & Friendship Photo Frame Surprise by Belen

Hello friends! I have a fun "What's Old Is New Again" post to share with you today.

February is fast approaching and it's a time to celebrate those special people in our lives. Sure, it's often a wife, husband, life partner... but I think it's also the perfect time to give those besties of ours some love too! I'm talking that special friend that means the world to you. The one that laughs with you, cries with you, and won't bat an eye as you power through a pint of ice cream while you recount the woes of a rough week.

I say we do something nice for them and this is what I'm going to share with you today,

I went to my local Goodwill and stumbled across the perfect item to revamp. It's a friendship photo frame.

It's a good-sized frame of nice quality and I picked it up for just $5.00. Score!

Once I got it home, I took it apart and gave it a good cleaning. Next, I masked off the areas that I wanted to preserve and I gave the mat board a coat of clear gesso.

After letting that dry for a few, I added some color using acrylic and gold gesso.

Next, it was stencil time, my Fave part! I used a lovely copper color of paint with the large stencil from Carol Wiebe's July 2017 Floral Facets StencilClub Set.

Using more of that gold gesso and the Brick Factory stencil by Daniella Woolf I added in some more texture.

Because I'm absolutely wild about Carolyn Dube's Scribble Scratch Handwriting stencil, I added in some of that design using black acrylic and then just used my fingers to add in some solid splotches of color in copper.

All that's left is to add a photo but I didn't want to include that here for fear of ruining the surprise for my friend! Guess we'll have to wait on that, but I do hope that I've managed to inspire you to revamp some of your old belongings or take a stroll through your local thrift store and find some new ones.

Have Fun & Happy Stenciling!
xo, Belen