DIY Pencil Crayon Photo Frame!

Hello everyone!

Today I'm going to show you how to make this really cool Coloured Pencil Picture Frame. I think these are a really great idea for your back to school pictures. I know that at the beginning of every new school year my parents would have me up and ready for a photography session and I'm sure it's no different these days. 

I think these are really unique and fun and relatively easy to make yourself. 

However, if you would like to buy one that I've pre-made I'm currently selling on eBay. You can see the item here. I'm selling them for £10.00 each with £1.00 P&P.

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You'll need:

Plain photo frames. I bought mine from Ikea for £2.75 for 2.

A Saw (And adult supervision if you're a young one).

A Vice (Tried sawing without one...hopeless).

Lots of coloured pencil crayons!

PVA Glue

Sandpaper (or a nail file).

Pencil Sharpener.

I bought three sets of the NYTTJA photo frames. They're quite thin and, well, cheap looking really but when you're going to jazz it up anyway... what does it matter?

These are £2.75 a packet.

Step 1

Remove the back from your photo frame and leave it elsewhere you're not going to be needing it for a while.

Step 2

Sharpen all of your pencil crayons first then measure them against the width of the frame and mark where you want to be sawing. 

Step 3

Set up the vice and begin to saw your crayons. This is time consuming work but once you get the hang of it you do pick up pace.

Once again, ask for adult supervision if you haven't used a saw before. 

Your little pencils should look like this when done:

You will need to trim and sand the bottom of the pencils so that they aren't sharp.

Step 4

Organise your pencils.

I first sorted mine into bright colours and dark colours so they were evenly distributed. Then I lined them up alternately, so one facing up, one facing down and so on.

Then I sandpapered the whole photo frame to make it rough. Don't worry the PVA glue will make it shiny again once it's dried and the roughness helps the glue do its job better.

Step 5

Apply quite a thick layer of glue to the first side of your frame. You don't have to but I found it helped to wait a few minutes for the glue to get a little bit tacky before I started to add the crayons.

I definitely found that PVA did the job best. I also bought a hot glue gun to do this job but the glue dried too quickly and then the pencils just snapped off anyway. 

Good old PVA. 

Step 6

Add your crayons and keep an eye out for the wonky ones... mine liked to move off their own accord. 

Step 7

Repeat the whole process for the second side. 

Step 8

Making sure your remaining pencils are sharp you can arrange them for the next two sides. I found that I had an array of different lengthed crayons left over but you may have to do a bit more sawing to get some different lengths happening. 

Step 9

Glue everything down, making sure that everything is even and straight. 

Step 10

Leave it to dry over night... or if you're impatient like me, hair dry it.

The next day, you may feel inclined to apply a top coat of PVA glue... I wouldn't recommend this is mine didn't dry evenly at all and some of the glue in between pencils didn't dry completely clear. so I basically ruined the first two I made :( This is why it's important to apply a thick layer when you're gluing the pencils in the first place. 

I don't know whether a spray glue or something would help make everything super secure but I didn't have one to hand unfortunately. 

As long as you're not deliberately trying to break the product everything should be fine. 

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The final product looks really great even if I do say so myself. 

Again, I'm selling these on eBay HERE. I have 4 to sell currently! Due to the time consuming aspect of it, they are priced at £10.00 with £1.00 P&P. 

Let me know if you like these photo frames or if you're going to make your own :)

Thanks for reading, 

Leanne x