Quick & Easy Gift

I direct the 1st-2nd Grade Children's Choir at my church. Every Christmas and spring I like to give my adult helpers a little gift to say Thanks! for all their assistance that year. (Good help is hard to find, and I've had some GREAT help in the 10 years - yikes! - I've been directing.) So last week I gave them this super easy and quickly-decorated frame. I'll tell you just how easy it was.

I started out with these way-cheap 4x6 unfinished wood frames from Ikea ($1.99 for a 3/pack - awesome!) and music note scrapbook paper from JoAnn's (about $.60 cents a page - I used two). Everything else - paint, mod podge, cardstock - I already had on hand. That's less than $5 for three gifts!!!

The only music-themed paper I found was bright white, but I wanted something that looked older. I tea-dyed the paper, which was really easy. I steeped one tea bag in about 1/2 cup of hot water, then used the tea bag to "paint" the tea onto the paper. The paper dries a little wavy, but if you're going to decoupage it, it will straighten out then.

I painted the bottom and sides of the frame in two coats of brown acrylic paint for a more finished look.

Then I traced the frame onto the paper, cut it out, and mod podged it on. Before I mod podged over the paper, I painted on a little glimmer - thicker on the frame edges, and just a little on the front. (I used DecoArt Dazzling Metallics in Champagne Gold.) I followed that with two coats of mod podge.

For the framed quote, I used part of a song our choir learned this spring for their May concert. I just typed it in Word and printed it on plain cardstock. Nothing tricky here!

So that's it. A quick and easy way to let someone know you appreciate them. You can easily adapt such an easy project to any theme or occasion by changing the paper and quote. You could use it as a picture frame, too - imagine that! Until next time...

Happy crafting,

Julie