Do you love sitting in your pajamas surrounded by magazine clippings while immersed in an art project? Then you will LOVE today’s DIY. It’s an expression frame.

Kind of like a vision board with less goal orientation and more express your soul.

All Great Stories Start Somewhere. They do, don’t they?

What you need:

1. Magazine clippings – I like doing collage-based artwork every couple of months, so I keep a clipping binder. Anytime I see an image or picture of something that I really like, I rip it and stuff it in my clipping binder. Clippings make great additions to a craft project, like my DIY jewelry organizer.
2. Exacto knife or scissors – I fell in love with exacto knives in high school. They are tiny razor blades attached to a pencil-sized cylinder and they perfect precise and detailed cutting.
3. Gel-Medium (gloss or matte) – I use this to glue, coat, and seal all of my collage pieces/paintings. Modge Podge might do the same thing.
4. A self-healing mat or cardboard – I used cardboard for years when cutting with my exacto knife and just in the last year or two discovered the brilliance of the self-healing mats.
5. Acrylic paint brushes
6. A cup of warm water and a spare rag

Start by picking out all the clippings you might want to use. You can go with a ‘theme’ or be spontaneous.

Once you have some clippings set aside, start to visualize how they will fit on the frame, how the pieces will flow from one side to the next.

Then start cutting out or around the clippings. Go with -scapes, objects, phrases, and patterns.

Once you have a vague idea of how they will be placed, take the gel medium and a paint brush and paint the back of the clipping or the frame, place the clipping and press with your fingers so it seals/sticks nice and flat.

Use patterns to fill in empty areas.

Find letters to add an inspirational message to your expression frame.

Just start. Somewhere.

Once all of your clippings are ‘glued’ on, finish off with one or two coats of gel medium over the entire project. This seals everything and depending on if you use gloss or matte gel, your frame may have a nice sheen to it.

I have mine hanging as an art piece all on its own but feel to actually frame something.  Allow it to dry for several hours or overnight before hanging it up.

I would love to see your expression frame, tweet me @meeshfelt with a pic!

xoxo