How to make your own "ANTIQUE" Picture Frames

well I've received loads of requests from people who want to know how I frame my pictures and my favorite way is to use these really awesome super expensive antique frames just kidding I totally made this frame and in this video I'm gonna show you how [Music] now I know not every artist out there frames in our work but for myself personally I love to frame my work because I believe that a good frame can enhance the overall quality of the picture and set it off to its best advantage now personally a frame is not just a frame there are many different kinds that I work with one of the most common that you'll find when you go out to your local picture framing shop is what I call a chop frame these are frames that are just bought straight off the shelf from the molding that you select and the picture framer will cut the corners and join something together like this now of course the sky's the limit with the combinations that you can come up with and you can come up with some really nice options but I tend to shy away from frames like this because they're really kind of common just about anybody could walk into their local frame shop and buy one of these they're not really unique now the next type of frame that I really love is a handmade frame these frames are exquisite built specially by master craftsmen to your specifications this one was made by a buddy of mine named Toby guest and Perth shout-out to guests fine art services I've had this frame for years and I absolutely love it so if you want something that looks kind of unique another type of frame is a ready-made frame something that comes already beautifully handcrafted or at least it has that look and you can just pop your paintings straight in there you don't have to get it custom cut and joined this thing is ready to go to exhibit something off to its best advantage the trouble is though with some of these that I've found is the sizes can vary sometimes they're not finished off quite the right way and they can be a little bit over the top I found some clients rejected these outright because they were just too much now if you're lucky you can sometimes get your hands on a beautiful antique frame and this is one of the only antiques genuine antiques that I have now of course that's an on plein air painting that I did that I popped into this frame but this frame here is from the 19th century and I absolutely love it it's quite hard though to find these these are rare as hen's teeth and so when you can't find one great buy it if you can get it at a good price but can be really really expensive but my absolute favorite kind of frame is one that I make myself here in the studio to look like an antique maybe slightly better quality than the ready-made and it's a combination of all these different kinds of ideas borrowed from various different places and I call it a Franken frame I'm gonna explain to you exactly what that is but before we jump into that there's a massive painting that I've finished recently that needs a frame and I've ordered a special frame all the way from Australia the trouble is is that the picture framer couldn't actually put this thing together for me because by the time they secured all the corners they couldn't even get it out of their workshop so I've got a special delivery in and I'm gonna have to put this thing together myself let's check it out whenever I get an order like this from overseas I do worry about damage to the frame so the first thing I'm gonna do is unwrap these links and it's all been shipped to me separately and I'm just gonna check the corners to make sure nothing has been chipped off now if there is any damage I'm sure I'll be able to fix it but I just lay everything out make sure that everything's here and it's all in order so what we have here is the outer of the frame and the slip which fits inside that frame and this is going to really set off the painting okay well everything appears to be in order no damage at all but I don't know if they're quite the right size yet so I need to lay them out with each other and make sure everything fits in and this slip is gonna fit in with that outer frame and then I'm gonna get the painting that's the moment of truth is this gonna fit around the painting yikes I hope so super nervous I had to call the framers ahead of time with my measurements of the painting and they custom cut all of these moldings to fit the measurements that I gave them anywhere along that chain a mistake could have been made the first thing I need to do is just make sure everything lines up with itself and then I'm just gonna place this painting in here just dry before I secure anything to make sure it fits now of course because I'm often working in the studio alone I have to manage on my own and try not to hurt myself and yes I'm a massive doofus at the best of times now I never like to put the big part of any frame right against the painting but give it some breathing space hence the slip but these two separate parts has made it a bit of a job for me now to join the frame remember I have to do this all myself because the picture framer couldn't do it in their workshop and then it couldn't be shipped to me all in one piece so I'm going to use this biscuit joiner here what this is gonna do is gonna cut a really nice little notch in the corner of the frame and then I'm going to use a biscuit to hold those two ends together I just need to get the slot in exactly the right place and when you're doing this on an expensive frame like this that has traveled thousands of kilometers to your studio and you can't get a replacement it's best to use a test piece first no no no you know most biscuit joiner is like this have got a height adjustment so you can gauge where that slot is gonna be cut this is in the right place the previous cut was not however and it came through and cut the surface that was visible on the front of the frame total newbie mistake anyway make sure you do a test folks before trying this at home now I don't have a lot of the equipment that most professional picture framers have in their workshops so I have to use biscuits in the corners here this will provide some strength across a big frame like this normally in a framing workshop they would use what's called a V nail that gets driven up into the corner but this year it would stop any lateral movement together with plenty of glue I feel confident that it's gonna be nice and secure now similarly I don't have any clamps so what I have to do is lay these pieces out on my workshop table and clamp it to the table itself I also check with a right angle to make sure that every corner is nice and square I need to get out a liberal amount of that woodworking glue to make sure that corner is really secure and then plenty of glue down in the slot where the biscuit fits in now my theory with this glue is that the more I use the better as long as that corner is nice and secure I'm gonna sleep easy at night knowing it's not gonna fall apart on the gallery wall or on the clients wall now normally I'd have to leave a frame like this on my workshop table for about 48 hours to make sure it's nice and dry now before you point it out to me I know there are two biscuits in this joint I'm just using that to push the glue back down into the joint I'm not a complete idiot just mostly it's quite satisfying when these two pieces come together and that join completely disappears I will have to come back at some point though and do a little bit of filling and refinishing of the corner to make sure it doesn't show up in an obvious way now I have to repeat this process across all four corners and again the floor is pretty unny which makes the tables uneven which I'm worried is gonna make the corners uneven so I'm shimming up with little bits of cardboard and foam and then clamping this down to the table itself using these large C clamps now the bits of foam protected the frame so I don't damage it with the clamp itself it took quite a bit of fiddling back and forth to make sure those joins came right together and that there was no air gap between them at all I removed the clamps after about 24 hours and let it dry thoroughly then I come back with some of this wood filler and just fill in those corners if there was a gap that it appeared and that place where I nicked the front of the frame with the biscuit joiner a bit of wood filler goes a long way see if we can get this covered up so no one will recognize it I'm constantly checking the surface and I wipe away any excess of this stuff so I don't damage the pristine part of the frame now once this is dried I can go back with some paint and refinish it but I make sure all the other corners are covered up first and I get this really liberally into the slip and the big part of the frame as well again I make sure I clean away any of that excess once this wood fillers dry it's really hard to get off unless I use sandpaper and that will totally destroy the front of the frame now I'm not really comfortable just leaving a biscuit secure in the corners so I'm gonna add a bit of extra strength and support here using these right angle corner braces here a series of screws will hold that together in another direction and they're not going to pull apart ever now I use a bit of masking tape around this drill bit to make sure that I don't push the drill all the way through and destroy the frame and yet another way so here I just go down a certain amount of depth and have it a screw that is just the right length to go into the frame itself across all four corners this will provide plenty of strength I think when all said and done here and the painting is at rest in this frame it's going to weigh well over 20 kilograms so that can be a lot of tension on each of these corners similarly I need to make sure that the slip and the outer frame are one cohesive unit so I go around and screw in on the diagonal one frame into the other I do this at multiple points all around the frame now my filler is completely dry and it's time to touch up the join in the frame and I'm gonna use striped black acrylic paint for this corner here for the outer frame and I'll use a bit of burnt umber for the inner frame once it's filled that corner I can then go about wiping away the excess that's left on the surface and it's not as noticeable we don't have that stark white line that was left by the filler I'll do this to all four corners and I'm starting to lose track of where that damage occurred along the front of the frame it's come up pretty good so now the frame is ready time to get the painting in there well finally the big picture is framed and I couldn't be happier with it and it's in pride of place and my gallery down here in the South Island of New Zealand if you ever in Lawrence come down check it out now I just love the way this thing came out even though it's just a chalk frame I think it sets the painting off pretty nicely now you can't even tell where I screwed up that corner it's on one of those I can't tell but look it's our little secret it's not like this is going on the internet or anything so I'm yeah cool [Music] now let's take a quick break from the framing I need to tell you about this video sponsor Skillshare make 2020 the year where you deep in existing passions explore new skills and get lost in creativity with skill shares online classes what you find just might surprise and inspire you skill share offers classes designed for real life so you can move your creative journey forward without putting life on hold you can learn and grow with short classes that fit your busy routine now as creatives we're gonna find all kinds of things that can help us along our creative journey and even our professional journey on Skillshare now personally I've used Skillshare a bunch in the past I used it when I was learning how to use Photoshop and I've used it recently with learning after-effects to help push my videos to another level there's a fantastic class right now on skill shares platform by a guy named Jake Bartlett and I found that some of his techniques and some of his tuition through skill share was absolutely fantastic and I came away with a new understanding with using this program which can be quite complicated Skillshare is also super affordable especially when you compare this to in-person classes and workshops an annual subscription will set you back less than $10 a month the first 500 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get two free months of premium membership so you can explore your creativity and a huge thank you to skill share for sponsoring this video and making free content like this possible now we're gonna make our very own Franken frame so in order to do this what I've done is I've gone and raided my local frame shop now I know what you're thinking how is this any different from just a normal chopped frame we see a lot of picture framers out there have got rejects and they got a stack of frame sitting up in the corner well my local frame shop did anyway a frames that they just couldn't sell and these were odd lengths and odd sticks where they couldn't make a complete big frame or maybe it was a leftovers from somebody else's order so I came into the frame shop I bought a load of these at cost or less van cost and I picked up some great deals here so for the purposes of making this special unique kind of frame any old length of molding will do so what I'm looking for are some unique combinations of these different kinds of moldings to make an interesting shape one of my favorites here is this molding here and I'm gonna attach a little bit of a slip or a bead on the inside of that frame and I think that that would make a really cool frame and have a really nice old and antique look by the time I'm done with it let's get started I have this really cool bit of equipment in the workshop specially designed to permanently turn your fingernails seriously this thing that gives me nightmares it's a picture frame there's a guillotine and these blades are held at a perfect 90 degree angle and it comes in at a 45 degree angle to make a perfect miter joint I use this on some of those moldings that I picked up from the picture framer I think go about the same process of using biscuits to secure the corners of course using plenty of glue as well now all of these are going to be random and oddest sizes and I make sure I get plenty of glue in those joints sometimes if I can't get a biscuit in there what I'll do is I'll screw or nail across the corner maybe sometimes even drill a much bigger hole and put a dowel through there to secure it now all of this will eventually be covered so I'm not too worried about the accuracy of the joins now a lot of these have got paint finish and gold foils and have even been plasticized on the front some of them have really horrible finishes so what I do first is I go about scuffing up the entire surface to allow any primer that I'm gonna put over this to stick oh yeah we're gonna cover everything you see here I want to completely refinish each and every one of these frames now some of them I want to cover a lot of the texture that's in there so I use this wood filler to rub into that texture to create more of a aged look I don't want so much clean defined detail on the front of these frames so this process is not simply to just completely hide what the manufacturers of the molding put down there but more or less obscure it in an antique way i liberally rub this all over the frames and wipe it back again with a bit of a damp cloth I'm gonna have to go back later and sand this the aim of the game here is to make this frame look really really old so I'm playing with different things and experimenting with the texture to make sure that I create that look I'd make sure that the frames are thoroughly dry before moving on to the next part of the process some of them might require additional sanding across the corners also the aim of this is to make the frames look like one continuous piece I don't really like the look of being able to see where the corners join filling across the corner creates the look that I'm after now with some of these primers that I apply it by letting them dry with a heat gun it creates this really interesting and granular surface sometimes it's reminiscent of wood grain any extra texture I can then use for the priming process and once that priming is completely dry I'm getting the surface ready for the next coat of climbing ice and all of this back when it's dry for about 24 to 48 hours now I've taken this into a friend's workshop he has a spray booth and this makes it really handy if I've got to get out the spray cans now if you're gonna use any spray cans any aerosols at all it's best to do it in a well-ventilated space or outside now the priming that I'm using here is put on with the intention of going over the top with gold and red always is a beautiful color when it shows through in the gaps of the gold leaf now let's get ready for the best bit of this process we're gonna cover these frames with gold now there are several different types of gold leaf that you can get on the market one of my favorites though is this old-world art gold leafing kit now the leaf that I'm using is technically called slug it's not true pure gold it's just imitation now seen as every other part of my process is pretty unorthodox we're going to continue with that theme instead of using gold sizing I'm using straight-up Windsor Newton liquid as the medium to adhere the gold to the frame I found that this actually works great all we need is something sticky enough and workable for long enough that sticks that gold down for the duration I've never had any issues with that gold coming back off in fact once it hardens and it plasticisers it really creates some beautiful effect now gold leaf can take some getting used to it's a load of fun to apply but there are some tricks involved I'm sure they're gonna be professional guilders out there screaming at their screens right now and trash-talking me but let me just let you know I am NOT a professional at this I'm just doing what seems to work for me I'm sure there is a better way of doing this I'm gonna apply these loose leaves as full sheets to the wet portion of the frame and then systematically go along side by side I always get super nervous when applying the first sheet of gold and make sure I don't breathe if you haven't noticed this stuff is incredibly thin and carries in the wind very easily once it touches the surface the liquid grabs hold of it and it's down for the count I use another card to shape and mold it into place gently tapping it along the surface to make sure it gets down in the curve of the frame now I can't just leave it there it's only hit the high points of the frame so I get a clean chip brush and I push this down perpendicular to the frame without dragging it across the leaf and just tap it down so the entirety of that sheath is secure it then goes down into all of those nooks and crannies now it might tear at some point during this process but this is the look that we're going for we want a bit of that red showing through the more uneven and irregular that it is the older the frame looks and personally I want something that looks really gnarly really old like it's been collecting dust for the last 600 years now trying to get leaf to go across the corner can be a bit trickier this is where the sheet really starts to tear apart I'm not too worried about this though because I've got little tiny pieces of gold leaf to fill in any gaps if a really big one shows up again I'm constantly checking across the surface to make sure I have the right kind of pattern than the right kind of look if anything is showing up with too much of a gap I can go back and just fill that in also once the frame is completely dry I can rub some of this gold leaf back to reveal more red if I wish at the end of the day it just depends on what look you're trying to achieve so here's another frame that I'm gonna make entirely gold this is gonna be a sweet little one for a seascape painting that I'm planning now once the gold leaf is completely dry I can go back and patch it up with little bits of gold here and there now if you ever feel like giving this a try in your own studio word of warning it is super addictive you're gonna be wandering around the house looking for things that you can turn to gold the next day it's time to get all of those excess flakes of gold off the surface and to do this I'm just using the vacuum cleaner and a dry brush this is super important this part of the process to make sure I don't get any flakes of gold getting lodged in the antiquing part of the process and some antiquing will be required as beautiful as these frames look they're just a bit too loud for the paintings that I want to display now this frame we'll require a bit more of a precision job with the gilding the gold leaf is only gonna stick down where i've applied at the liquid original so I've just applied that to the inside bead of this frame and the outer bead leaving a central stripe for some color which I might come back and add some black I'm going for maybe a Flemish or a Dutch look with this frame I'm really inspired by a lot of frames that I've seen in galleries and museums around the world a lot of frames that are showing on old masters works have really informed a lot of this process what I've tried to do here has come up with creative ways that I could achieve a similar look but at a fraction of the cost and with things that I had available in the studio now for the color I'm using straight-up ultramarine blue and burnt umber mixed with liquid and we're going directly over the top of that spray paint red the spray paint is a red oxide color it's designed as a filling preparation for multiple different kinds of surfaces from woods to metal to plastic and the oil paint goes directly over the top and beautifully again I'm doing a very careful job to cut right to the edge of that gold leaf the gold was brushed back clean and completely dry before applying that paint while the paint's still wet I go back and scrape through the surface to reveal some of the red where this has picked up some of that initial ground before I put on that red primer it's starting to reveal these really beautiful grooves which are reminiscent of wood texture I love bringing up all this kind of interest in the surface in the frame now we're starting to create something really interesting now once my frames completely dry again coming at it another 24 hours later I apply the antiquing this is just straight-up burnt umber with a touch of ultramarine blue and lots of liquid original this will help me achieve an aged look because the paint accumulates down and those deep crevices of all the texture while it's still wet I go ahead and wipe it off it will leave all of the high points nice and glossy from the gilding but that paint will stay in the recesses this creates even more interest in the surface of the frame and I've applied it only to the gold area now I'm gonna go over with two different kinds of antiquing here one layer of umber and another one to achieve a dusty look I'll go through lots of rags in this process and it might seem inconsequential but t-shirt material is fantastic for antiquing frames you can really buff off the surface of the frames to achieve more shine as you want it however once that antique color has gone completely dry it's very difficult to get back off of there I'm pretty happy with the way this frame looks it will require one more color but so far so good now let's create a bit of a dust color to accumulate in those deep crevices and cracks in the frame itself I'm gonna use some of the colors that are commonly used in my paintings I have cobalt teal ultramarine blue burnt umber unbleached titanium titanium white and yellow ochre what I'm going for is I lighter dusty green something reminiscent of a copper oxide this will contrast really nicely with that burnt umber and the red showing through gaps in the gold leaf I'm using plenty of that liquid original to create a nice fluid mixture I'm not worried about this going yellow at all it's not being applied to the painting itself I use this bristle brush to make sure the paint goes down into the depth of every crevice on the frame then while the paint's still wet I wipe this off the high places and it's left that lighter color down in the crevices now it has obscured a lot of the umber that I applied before but the two colors are reacting together beautifully I feel that antiquing a frame like this works better with those two tones than just one single tone it creates a more aged look now whilst I liked that black this is knocked it down considerably and it's avoided having any stark contrast within the frame itself that might distract from the painting that I want to display in this frame I think the two are going to go together really nice similarly with this frame its accumulated down into the cracks as well revealing a bit more of the texture in the frame itself this frame was a composite of two different frames and it's worked quite well as this one is as well two different frames that have gone together but now they formed one continuous piece now I have seen a bunch of frames in my time but I really do feel pieces look like genuine antiques now I could keep messing with them but I'm gonna leave it there well this was a really fun project to work on and in fact these are now my favorite frames in my collection and I'm gonna be framing a lot more of my work using the method that you saw here in this video now there's a few reasons why I'm going to continue to do this and why I think this is a really good way to frame your pictures number one it's fun it's an awesome project if you can spare the time this is a really satisfying way to go about framing your pictures number two you've actually got something here that's pretty cost effective when you compare that with an expensive handmade frame that you'd get from master craftsmen or an antique the third reason I really love doing these and I'm gonna continue to do it is I have something that custom fits my painting perfectly because they're finished hand finished with the same colors that I use in my palette that I create my paintings with and also the last point point number four is I have something that is unique these are absolutely one-of-a-kind and I know for a fact that no other artists out there is gonna have a frame quite like these now I can't wait to get paintings ready for these frames I do have one that I'm gonna come back to very very soon and you're gonna see this this was a non-planar study in an area close to where I live I'm still gonna put a few touches on this painting but some like that would just clip straight in there and I think that that's gonna be a fantastic resting place for this painting I couldn't be happier so that's how I go about framing my pictures I hope you've enjoyed this video and if you did then please click that like button for me if you want to come back for more see more videos just like this one some of my painting tutorials my podcast or my sketch endeavor series make sure you subscribe to this channel click that notification icon so you notified when I upload another video as always you can find me on social media those links are down below but most important make sure you're subscribed through my website at Andrew Tischler comm thank you so much for watching I'll see you again soon

Channel: Andrew Tischler

Views: 155,279

Rating: 4.934885 out of 5

Keywords: How to make your own picture frames, homemade frame, handmade picture frames, making picture frames, how to make a frame, picture framing, how to frame a painting

Id: bJ9r-Bos7yE

Length: 29min 43sec (1783 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020