Decorating Picture Frames And Boxes For Decoupage

You need to take proper care when cutting a very detailed design, like a leaf edge. Use your left hand to turn the paper as required, and cut the details of the design using your scissors.
When cutting designs like grass or fur, be innovative enough to add your own long curves if possible. In case you do not find some patterns good enough for your project like a blank portion in the picture or some straight edges, then you can cut away them from your image.
Once the design is ready to be pasted cut the bridges. In case the design is too delicate, you will need to put gum on the object and then paste the cut design. Use a moist sponge to clean any extra glue. Keep the sponge pieces handy when working with this technique. After wiping put your sponge piece in water. Because once the glue on it gets dried up, it would deface the sponge. Clean these sponge pieces properly with water and save for future use in your next project.
Fold and cut technique can give marvelous effects to your design. You can take colored pages from magazines and books and create symmetrical and beautiful designs using this technique. These designs can also be photocopied to make some layered/repeat design.
To decorate picture frames and sides of boxes, you can use cut corner patterns and other interesting shapes. You can cut coiled borders and repeat designs. For this you can cut it like a string or else outline your pattern on the paper and copy and cut it as many number of times as you require. Although it would not result in exact copies, but would be appreciably same.
Before pasting them, you will need to paint the white edges in your image. You can use a permanent marker or acrylic paint to color this. These colors actually blend nicely with your image. Maximum time's sepia or black would solve your purpose but in a few cases you may need to go in for other hues too.
If required the images can be pasted one on another. Images reaching over the edges give a beautiful effect in a box. You can paste both the lid and the box with the whole image. Canadian artist Christopher Freville often uses Victorian photos for pasting on the side of a box. Once the paste dries up simply make a cut at the joint of the lid and the box. This way the pattern would exactly correlate to each other.
You can use a blue TAC to place your cut outs at as desired and then sketch your boundaries using a pencil or chalk. This way you would know which cut out should be glued where. Blue TAC can also be used to trace the place to paste the cut out. And obviously this needs to be done gluing every cut out piece one by one.
Only if your base surface has extremely good color and luster that you will not need to cover it thoroughly but otherwise you got to cut good number of prints from magazines or gift wraps so that they sufficient to cover the whole object. While cutting you should keep in mind that you have kept enough space to let the prints overlap slightly.
Before gluing experiment with different lay outs in which you can place your picture. Once you get a satisfactory look, paste it using your fingers and slightly press the print from the center towards its edges, thus avoiding any air bubbles or wrinkles.