Secret Formula for the Perfect Painted Gold Frame

I could never find the perfect gold frame, so I came up with my own method to paint them myself! Here’s my secret formula for the perfect painted gold frame!

I love the classic look of a painting in a gold frame and I’ve had a few prints over the last little while that I’ve been wanting to frame in this way. But could I find a decent gold frame? Of course not! It seems to be yet another case of me not being able to find exactly what I have in mind anywhere in Canada, or anywhere that will ship to Canada. So a DIY painted gold frame solution was in order!

I’m sharing this idea for this month’s edition of the Thrifty Style Team! I noticed the other day when I was at our local thrift store that there were quite a few frames there that would work perfectly for this project. I bought my frame new, but you definitely don’t need to! Any frame with a great shape will work. Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of this post and follow the links to check out all of the other team members’ thrift style ideas for this month!

The Search for the Perfect Gold Frame

What I really had in mind in a gold frame was something that wasn’t too shiny, wasn’t too modern, but also wasn’t too ornate. Something simple, but with a feeling of a bit of history behind it. And also something in an 8×10 size or larger, that I could mat to 8×10. I also wanted to find more of a larger scale, long-term solution because I have a wall that I’d love to fill with a few different pieces of art. So a one-off find wasn’t going to cut it.

I played around when I was painting these frames that you can see in the mudroom, and then I really zeroed in on my perfect formula when I painted this one that I’m showing you today.

The Secret Formula for the Painted Gold Frame

As with all good things, the solution here was pretty simple. All it took was a trip to the Michaels paint to buy and test just about every little bottle of gold paint that they had. I was up for the challenge. 🙂

As it turns out, the solution I needed wasn’t to find the one perfect gold paint, but rather to use three different ones in a specific order.

So here’s what I do!

• One coat of Antique Bronze paint (a darker metallic brown)
• One coat of Emperor’s Gold paint (a more orangey-gold)
• One coat of Champagne Gold paint (a very non-orangey gold)

The key to success is to use a brush with bristles as opposed to a foam brush because you really want to see the texture of the brush strokes. This gives it more of an aged feel and makes it feel less like a cheapo paint job. It’s also really important that you keep your brush strokes really straight and keep the coats of paint very thin so you don’t get the paint globbing up in the corners. It turns out the “globbing” isn’t a real word, but you get what I mean. 🙂

Here’s the overall look of the frame with the print!

I just love these watercolour prints from Rainsford Company, one of my favourite little Canadian online shops (They ship free to the US as well!). These prints are so beautiful up close and the colours are so vivid. You really can’t tell that they’re prints and not actual watercolour paintings. I really feel like I need to collect all of them because they just make me so happy. This isn’t a sponsored post, I just really love these and wanted to tell you about them. 🙂

Do you have any photos or art prints that would look perfect in a gold frame like this?

Here are the rest of the fun ideas for this month!