Mod Podged Picture Frame

Happy Cinco de Mayo! As promised, I have a new post this week.  And a doozie of a story.  I bought a $1 picture frame from Michaels a few months ago, and my plans for it have changed four times now.  Let me walk you through my mind...

1. I was going to use comic strips to decorate it.  Have them overlapping, a cool collage.  This will probably happen in the future, but collecting the comics was getting moderately daunting.
2. I decided that I wanted to use it somehow in my future classroom, so I found a bunch of inspirational education quotes.  I was going to mod podge them onto it, then have my "teacher rules" in it.  I love it when teachers display what rules they'll follow (e.g. I will respect you, I will put in my most effort to reach your needs, etc.).
3.  I then got an assignment for one of my classes.  I had to make a "banner" (or any display) of my beliefs for inclusion.  Well, here I had this picture frame that had been sitting around.  Why not use it for this assignment instead?  So I bought some scrapbooking stickers to decorate it.  And then I lost the stickers.  I tore apart my apartment three times over searching for them.  So change from plan three to plan...
4. was just a change in the stickers I used.  I bought new ones from Michaels today.  And decided I should probably use them immediatly so that I don't loose them again.  After all, this is due Wednesday.

Here are my materials:

• Wooden picture frame
• Scrapbook paper
• Exacto-knife
• Pencil
• Paint
• Mod Podge
• Brush for paint
• Brush for mod podge
• Any other decorations your heart desires

First things first- paint the parts of the frame that will be showing.  For me this was the sides and the inner part of the frame.  The main front part will later be covered by my paper.

Next I traced my frame on my paper.  Sorry about the blurry photo, but I think you have the idea.

Use your handy dandy exacto-knife to cut out the paper.  Perfect!

 Mod podge that sucker down.  LET IT DRY!  I got impatient at this point, which caused me to make a pretty obvious mistake (obvious, that is, if I took good pictures).  After it's dry, you will want to file down the paper so that it fits flush to the frame.  I used a nail file.  If you don't let it dry all the way you'll end up bringing up parts of the paper.  I fixed this later by putting a sticker on top of it.

When the paper is perfectly set, put a couple of coats of mod podge on the top.  I also coated the sides that I painted so that it would have that pretty glossy appearance all over.

After it's completely dry, add the embellishments (before you loose them).  I love these 3D stickers.  They were 40% off, and I had a coupon for an extra 25% off.  Can't beat that! 

And here it is completely finished!  I hand wrote my beliefs on construction paper, which I then coated with mod podge.  My other plan was to laminate it, but I figured I had mod podge with me, while I would have to go somewhere else to pay for laminating.

I'm happy with how it turned out, although I'm not sure if I'm going to leave my inclusion stuff inside or if I'm going to change it out for something else when I actually bring it into my life.