My Film Frame Results! Thursday, December 11th Daily News, Money Making

So as promised, I successfully completed my film frame, and have the photographs to prove it! You can see the starting photo here and the completed product here. I would embed the photos into the post, but sadly they are quite big, and quite blurry (thanks to my phone being a bit rubbish), but you should be able to see them ok.

As you can see, I started out with a variety of materials – some of which were standard; sellotape, scissors etc. The frame I bought for £1.50 in a cheap store, and luckily it came with a transparent back, meaning I didn’t have to somehow ‘hack’ the back of a picture frame out. So I decided I would only use one piece of black paper (cost of 20 pence), the film cells, and the postcard that came with them (approximately cost me £1.50). Plus the sellotape I bought, that comes to under £5. Not bad!

I ended up using a kitchen knife (a crafting knife is recommended) as opposed to the scissors I had, and scored out pieces of the paper after doing some measurements. I taped the film cells to the back of the paper so they could be seen through the hole, used some glue to stick on the ‘Transformers’ name tag, and cut a hole to show the picture through, which I taped onto the back. I slid the paper, with items attached, into the back of the frame and it was complete! Not very long to do, and pretty simple if I’m honest!

Now that I’ve done it once though, I have learnt from a couple of things, and how it could possibly be made better. Firstly I’d spend the money on a proper craft knife, as the kitchen knife made my edges look frayed. Second, I would probably use thicker paper, or cardboard, instead of black paper. One suggestion I had was that instead of using paper and sticking pictures on, I should design a picture (or layout) on the computer, and send it to a photo printing company. You can apparently get these prints for very cheap (about the same price or less than the actual paper I bought!) and they will fit to your exact specifications, meaning you don’t have to worry about the picture not fitting in the frame. This would also allow the picture to look very glossy, and mean all I would have to do is cut out a gap for the film strip. Not only would this mean it looks nice, but it would essentially be ‘unique’ to the type of film cell frames being offered in the market currently. I think I’m going to try this when I get the use of my Internet again, and see how much I can improve on it. I reckon with a bit of editing, these ‘new style’ picture frames could be marketed very well!

So there you have it. A practical way to design something for less than £5, which can come across as much, much more. Have you guys any suggestions of things that could be made to sell? If so, let me know!

Dan