Paint By Numbers

Festive Frames is an artform and you become the artist. As with any form of art you need to learn from scratch and as you develop your skills your natural artistic talent will come to the fore. Think of the Festive Frames system in same light as you would think of learning to paint. You start out with paint by numbers where you follow a pre-set design with full instructions to create your piece of artwork.

 

Eventually those who have natural skills will want to step up from following the instructions and make their own artistic creations. Festive Frames is the same. Initially you can follow our numerous set designs step by step to create the sculptures you see on the website. This may be all that you do and it is fine because with the one kit you could have a different sculpture in your display year after year. Plus, we will release new design instructions that you can buy and use your existing kit. However, for some people they may wish to take the journey one step further and create their own shapes and sculptures. They could be 3D, one dimensional or simply garden borders.  The choice is yours and either way you are creating art.

If you choose to develop your own designs here are a few tips.

Firstly, remember this isn’t easy, just like any art form it will take time and skill.

Start by mapping your design out on paper. The poles are all named after their length so you can work out the viability of your design on graph paper.

The flexible poles are 55cm and 110cm so if you are creating circles these work with 17.5cm, 34cm and 70cm pole radius sizes.

Don't try to create circles that have a radius larger than 70cm as the flexi that forms the circumference will not have enough support.  

Always remember to form a framework of ridged poles to create sculptures.

Don’t build too high unless your design is being fixed to a wall or similar.

Build your design with plenty of support and then remove any poles that you feel are surplus to requirement as you go.

You can buy top ups of all the parts on the website should your design exceed what you have in your kit. 

Remember that you can add additional lines to your design with line out (ribbon) lighting (See Lighting page) that don’t follow poles so long as there are places to fix them at intervals.

Keep in mind that once lit you will only see the shape of your lights so additional supports and structure is fine.

Try to think ahead as you build and work out how and where your lights will be attached.

Finally photograph your design so you can repeat it in the future if you wish.

Good luck and please email your finished designs to us at festiveframes@btinternet.com we would love to see them.