Faux pewter picture frame

Pewter is a lovely material to work with - it's also expensive, especially if you want to clad an entire picture frame. So, as usual, I wanted to come up with an alternative... a frame that looked like pewter but cost a heck of a lot less. Here's my take on a pewter picture frame using aluminium roofing foil that you will find at your local Builders Warehouse.

 

 

To make the picture frame you will first need a frame. I had an offcut of SupaWood that I cut out a centre square instead of going through the process of actually constructing a frame. This was really a test to see if the process I had in mind would work. For the next attempt I will be making a proper picture frame.

I am using the same principle as that for the dandelion triptych that I featured recently. In fact, this project is what got the whole process started and I eventually intend to start selling my relief designs if anyone is interested. I'm using a paint that is thick and dries hard to create a relief design on top of the SupaWood.

After letting the paint dry, I then applied the aluminium foil to the surface. You buy aluminium foil in a long roll and it's self-adhesive, which makes the entire process so much easier. However, if you want to recycle kitchen foil - you can. Use a sprayable adhesive to attach the recycled foil over the surface.

What made this project so simple was using my Dremel 3000 and a soft, rounded tip polishing point accessory. After applying the foil you use this to stick down the foil and bring out the detail of the design underneath.

Here's a closer view of how the Dremel polishing accessory flattens and enhances the detail. The Dremel MultiTool also evens out where tape is joined together, because the tape is only 50mm wide and you will need to apply two or three strips along each side of the frame.

 

 

DIY TIP:
When applying the strips onto the frame sides, make sure that you perfect align the edges. Any overlap will show through onto the finished design.

After applying tape to the front and sides of the frame you can start on the ageing technique to make the foil look more like pewter. I used normal acrylic craft paint. The trick is to use paint that is quite thick and almost dried out and you will see why in the next step.

Before the paint dries completely, use a soft, dry cloth to rub back the paint so that you only leave paint in the detail, as aged pewter would look. If the paint is too runny you end up removing all the paint. You can repeat the painting process as often as you like until you achieve the effect that you want.