How to Decorate Stretcher Frames

Sherry Tyra: Hi! This is Sherry Tyra. Welcome to my monkeysee.

com video on low-cost artwork. Now, that we have the fabric completely covering the stretcher frame, I am going to show you little secret about corners. Corners are my nemesis, I hate them because you have all this fabric bunched up in the corner and you do not know what to do with it. So, what I do is just cut like wrapping a present. What you do is when you get to the corner, you push it in and lay it flat on one edge and then you fold this into a triangle, just like that. You take your staple gun, staple the hack out of it; that is what I do. Turn this over and there you go, does not really matter what it looks like from the back, because you are not going to see the back, it is going to be on the wall; but you have a nice, smooth, flat edged corner when you are done. Now, we are going to take our little appliqus and we are going to put them onto the stretcher frame and like I said, you can use any design you want, flowers, birds, I have got these little abstract trees or plants here that I am going to use on this one. So be creative, come up with some fun things. You do not necessarily have to just use black felt, you can use different colors, really fun in kid's room to put bright, fun, punchy colors and create all kinds of things on these stretcher frames. So, once again we are going to cover our surface that will bring -- I am going to start out with this one right here, just lay down some paper or a drop cloth, use your spray adhesive, again it is very forgiving, you have got the felt that you do not have to seam, you do not have to edge, just cut out whatever you want and put it on your stretcher frame, you can lift it back up and move it around, if you do not like where it is at. Put it on, flatten it down and there you have your first appliqu. I am going to go ahead and put the rest of these on and then I will show you the finished product.

Okay, we are ready to put this last little tree on here, going to spray it, place it and press it down. Now, you do not necessarily have to use this spray adhesive. I like it just because it is easy and convenient, but they also make craft spray for fabric or craft glue for fabric that comes in a squirt tube, you can use your glue gun, all of that. I like this because it covers the entire piece of felt and it lays nice and flat, you do not have any edges picking up. Anyway, here we are, our finished artwork. Isn't that fun? I love it.

If you want to get really creative, you can use another piece of wood on the outside, take it and nail it to the outside, maybe in black, take a real thin piece of wood, three quarter of inch, very thin, cut it out, paint it black, put it around the outside for frame. This was very inexpensive; the fabric I found on the sale table; I think I paid $3 for the fabric; felt is very inexpensive, maybe 50 cents for dollars worth felt here and the spray adhesive, the stretcher frame was one eight foot piece of one by two. So, very inexpensive, plus then $10 and I have a beautiful piece of art. Alright, in our next segment, I am going to show you some tips on how to hang the artwork that you have just made.