Make a Decoupage Picture Frame for Your Favorite Doll

Once you’ve had a chance to explore this site, checking out the dolls and mixing and matching your favorite outfits, you’ll probably want to print a few of them. Go for it! For those prints, here is a home made frame that you can hang on your wall, display on your dresser, or give to a friend.

What You Need:

• 10-12 pictures (these can be photographs or more doll pictures)

• Bits of paper from magazines, fabric scraps, pieces of wallpaper

• 2 oz. of water based or acrylic paint (paint samples are perfect)

• 1 small headed paintbrush

• 1 plain, unpainted wooden frame that will fit your picture (probably 8.5”x11”)

• 1 small bottle of decoupage glue

• Scissors or an Exacto knife

The Steps:

1. Make a few color copies of your photographs or make sure you have doubles of the doll pictures that you want to use but aren’t framing. One technique is to make 10 to 12 copies of the doll you are framing and use various pieces of these for your frame decoupage.
2. Make color copies of the other pieces that you have gathered to decorate your frame: fabric pieces, magazine clips of words or images, wallpaper pieces – anything. Get creative! Maybe you’d like to make copies of the different kinds of clothes available on this site to put on the doll picture that you’re framing.
3. Paint the frame with one thin coat of paint, if you like. This will serve as a background, the color that will peek through between the decoupage pieces you use. Let the paint dry completely before going on to the next step.
4. Place your copies around the frame as you would like to see them in the final frame. Cut off the edges so the pieces fit together the way you like. If you don’t want any of the painted wood showing through, be sure to fit the pictures together tightly, trimming and placing them on the frame until you get the look that you want.
5. Remove all your pictures from the frame, being careful to keep them around the part of the frame where you want them to go.
6. Paint the frame with the decoupage glue. Be liberal with it, but not so much that it’s dripping. Secure your pictures where you want them. Let them dry.
7. When your pictures don’t move when touched (the glue has secured them), paint over them with a second, thin layer of glue.
8. While the second coat dries, place the pieces from the second step (the wallpaper sample picture, the magazine clips, etc.) where you would like them. Be sure to use different sizes and scatter them around for a collage look.
9. When these are mostly dry, paint on top of them with a third layer of the decoupage glue. Let this last coat dry completely before you put your doll picture in the frame and hang it up or give it away.
10. Enjoy your doll!

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