Ombre photo frame how-to.

Since I just had the pleasure of moving less than two months ago, I am fully aware of almost every one of my possessions. I'm trying hard to really get a sense of the things I love, the things I need, and everything else (ideally, so the everything else pile can go straight to Goodwill). And maybe this project was an attempt to move this little frame from the everything else pile into the things I love pile. :)

I've had this frilly gold frame for a few years. It's cute, and I love gold, just not this combination. It just always seemed to fussy, which is probably why I never put a photo in it. I knew I wanted to tone down the contrast of the applied design and modernize it a bit. I decided on the perfect technique: ombre! It's a popular style right now from hair color to furniture (you can't open up Pinterest without seeing SOMETHING ombre). So I broke out my craft paints and a paint brush.

I used plain white acrylic paint, and Martha Stewart high gloss paint in "beach glass". I roughed up the edges a little bit with some fine grit sandpaper, wiped it off, then painted the whole thing white to provide a good base coat. I think I gave it about 3 coats of white to make sure all of the gold was covered.

 I divided the frame in my mind in 3's. The top would remain white, the bottom would be the deepest aqua color, and the middle would be the faded transition area. With this in mind, I mixed up half white paint and half aqua paint. Using vertical brush strokes (and a somewhat dry brush) I painted the middle transition area.

Since the ombre design is vertical and I wanted to make sure the paint color blended and almost disappeared into the white, I made sure not to do any horizontal brush strokes. When I was satisfied with the faded edge, I painted the rest of the frame to the bottom with the middle color.

Then, using the full-strength aqua, I painted the lower transition area again using dry brush strokes. Then I painted all the way to the bottom of the frame. Don't forget the inside and outside edges! After it was dry, I did a little bit of touch-up here and there, and refined the faded area.

I popped in a landscape photo and I'm done! I love it! It'll look great on the white dresser in my bedroom (as soon as the stack of boxes on top of it are unpacked...) What do you think? Do you love the ombre trend?