Happy Haunting Backless Frame

If you remember my post here, you will know that there have been some sayings I have been wanting to work with on my Halloween crafts. This one is "Happy Haunting."

I had a frame laying in my craft room that I bought awhile ago and decided to use it for this project.

What you will need:

-Any size frame

-Picture mat

-Halloween paper (or the colors of Halloween)

-Glue stick

-Vinyl letting. I used black vinyl

-Hook to hang it with (if your frame doesn't have one already)

How you make it:

(Clean the glass of the frame before getting started!)

First off I had a really cute idea in my head of painting the frame purple. It was one of those that just didn't work out. Mainly because of the frame. I painted a coat on it and knew right away it wasn't going to work. It was not real wood and it had some sort of shiny coat on it so the paint was not going on right. So I wiped it off right away and decided to try and sand it a little bit.

As you  can see in this picture there is still purple paint in the creases of the wood. It was a little hard to 

get all the way out!

 This is after I sanded it. Totally not perfect, but you will see how this plays an important role later!!

Next, I painted it black instead of purple. After that dried I decided to put a coat of mod podge over the black. Since I sanded it I took the "shine" out of it so it was more a dull black, but this way it would protect the paint and give it some shine or a glossy look!

While that dried, I worked on decorating the picture mat. This frame that a bought already had one in it. It was a boring white color. I decided to put some cute paper over it to make it look more like Halloween. I didn't have any Halloween paper on hand, but I did have paper in the colors I wanted to use...purple, orange and black. I started with the purple. I traced the mat on to the paper and cut that out. Then I did the same thing with the black glittery paper. I traced the middle of the mat and then measured out how far I wanted it to go out and cut that out. After I got the frame totally done I decided it needed some more color so I added the orange later so it is not pictured here. But I did the same measuring with the orange. I traced the outside of the mat and then measure how far I wanted it to come in and cut it out.

Next, I glued the paper to the mat using a glue stick

Then I cut out the "Happy Haunting" on my cricut. I used the font Grant's Ghosts found here. I used a mirrored image when I cut it out so it would be on the inside of the glass, not the outside.

I then put little dabs of hot glue in the corners of the mat and stuck that to the glass that way I knew the words were centered. You don't have to do this step if you don't want to. If you can eyeball it that is awesome because I totally could not do that!!

 Then I put the words on the glass. After I got that done I put the glass back in the frame. The frame I got had the little metal rectangles to hold the glass in. If you don't have these on yours you will want to hot glue the glass into the frame.

Lastly, I added a sawtooth hanger on the back so I could hang it up. The frame didn't have one to hang it up with on the frame itself.

Here is the finished decoration...

Now I am going to tell you about the "paint" I didn't get off the frame when I sanded it. Because the paint does not stick to it I was able to get an antiqued look in the creases of the frame. Since it was brown and then I painted black over/around it.  It is kind of hard to see in the picture, but I promise its there. I actually love how it turned out with the antiqued look!!

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