The Christmas season is upon us. The most organised will have completed the preparations, and a cupboard filled with wrapped presents just waiting to be delivered.
Before the delivery rounds, there’s the decorating issue. No home is festive without the tree, the decorations, and the festive ornamentals.
Part of the decor that gets done in a lot of homes is applying spray-on snow to windows, mirrors, and a range of decor items, picture frames included. But what about the pricey frames? The frames that are critical to protect? Do they just hang bare on the wall looking out of place? Not necessarily!
3 Simple Tips to Decorate Your Picture Frames This Festive Season
1. Work with spray-on snow (but carefully)
Spray-on snow is a sticky adhesive that can be removed without chemicals. If you want to go the spray-on decor route, it is possible. The only issue with spray-on snow is that it is sticky.
So long as it does not come into direct contact with your art, it can be used on frames. The frustrating part can be getting it off after the holidays.
No doubt, you will have experienced trying to remove a price sticker from glass or something plastic in the past. It takes a bit of scrubbing and some washing up liquid.
Spray-on snow or any adhesive is no different. It can be removed safely using a few non-toxic ingredients.
1. Baby oil
2. Rubbing alcohol
3. Vinegar
4. Washing up liquid
To remove it from Perspex/acrylic glazing, use a microfiber cloth with one of the above ingredients. Do not use a kitchen towel as the rough texture can scratch Perspex.
For treated wood picture frames, be careful with the quantities of cleaning products you use. You only want enough to remove the top coat of sticky residue without removing any lacquer or varnish that has been used to give the wood its solid colour finish.
Be cautious with how much glue you apply. Too much may require some gentle scraping to remove the residue. That is when there is a risk of removing varnish. Depending on the shade of the picture frame, varnish may be required to treat scuff marks or other parts of the frame damaged from glue removal.
For all of your quality picture frames, limit the use of sticky decorations to the glazing only, glass or acrylic. Those are easier to clean than the wood with minimal risk of damage.
2. Avoid the sticky residue by hanging a garland around your frame
A safe alternative for walls that are not freshly painted is applying sticky adhesive strips to your walls. From that, you can hang a garland around your frame without any of the sticky gunk coming into contact directly with the frame or the glazing.
This method saves the fussing around with cleaners trying to remove the sticky residue left behind on frames from Christmas decorations stuck to them.
3. Decorate frames using sticky dots
Sticky glue dots help minimise the use of glue in craft projects. For decorating photo frames, you could create stencil cut-outs, spray those with snow, glitter, attach flower petals or holly to paper, then stick the cut-out to the glazing with a sticky glue dot.
It’s much less work to remove a spot of glue than it is to remove an entire strip.