For the last several days I've been trying to find a recolor for the Lady on Red picture frame with no luck. I need something in a color like mahogany, ideally the same frame used on the Bella Squared painting. I actually found it but on a default, and I want the silver frame as well so that doesn't work. I downloaded the CEP files by hafiseazale, thinking I could recolor the frames myself. I can recolor the inside of a painting but so far I can't figure out how to do a frame. I have been trying to use Michelle's Add-a-Frame (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=542100) to 'change' the frame color, but the frames do not show the recolors. They are all the original silver color (with the transparent 'painting' - which I understand). I removed my entire Downloads folder, everything but that file, but it made no difference. What am I doing wrong?

The frame part of the texture is included with the painting part for Lady on Red (and most of the paintings). It's not a separate part that can be recoloured independently. So you would need to recolour the frame part of the texture alongside the replacement of the main image. It means you can only have that particular frame for that particular version of the picture. IYSWIM.

Michelle's frames work, as you know, by making the picture invisible so you can overlay her frame object on the original picture. It's a good compromise. If you're doing that, I'm not sure what the issue is. I'm not clear what Michelle did with the picture frames - whether she brought the mesh out a little proud of the original so that you always see her recolour but perhaps she'll come over here and explain.

Did you install the CEP by Hafiseazale? Michelle's recolors won't work with the CEP. So that's part of your question answered. My frame recolors are made to work with Hafi's CEP, so you could install those to check if the CEP is installed correctly.
As for recoloring with the CEP installed, it sounds like some of your settings might not be correct in simPE. I will be on my simming PC tomorrow, so I can get you a screenshot of my settings then, to see what's up

Edit: I remembered Lunie made a tiptorial about this issue. Maybe that will help

I tried to recolor the frame part of the texture with disastrous results. I can get the main image to change but I can't manage or understand how to deal with the frame part. Having a frame that's good for only one picture would be hard to deal with when I have a set I want to use together, even if I could figure out how to do it.

I did install the CEP but it doesn't help with Michelle's recolors - I didn't think it would but was hopeful. Thank you for the link to yours! I'm poking around SimPE with this issue not knowing what I'm doing so if something is wrong, I wouldn't recognize it. I don't think I read that tiptorial - I'll read that, too. Thank you!