After a year of daily art, I have a LOT of artwork to frame. I decided October would be Framing Month. Then at the end of October I decided November and December would be framing months too.
Fortunately, not all of the themes are framable. The flowers, food, car, hands & feet, and faces artworks are all in books. I have cut a couple of pages from the cars book for people who wanted them, but the rest will probably just stay in there. The books I drew the faces and hands & feet in are only partially used, so I intend to fill them at some point in the future.
In October I concentrated on pet portraits and toys. All but three pet portraits went to the pet owners and were very appreciatively received. The other three were pets of Paul and I, so they went into an IKEA frame together.
Half of the toys went into $10 IKEA frames. Unfortunately the paintings are 10×10 cm and the mat that comes with the frame has a 12×12 cm hole. So I had 30 custom matts cut with a 10x10cm hole. The paintings in the IKEA frames get to have a fancy ‘double matt’ look, and the rest have been taped to the backs of the remaining custom matts and wrapped in cellophane ready to sell or gift.
In November I intend to tackle the chairs, Nature’s Remnants and kitchenalia themes. A friend wants a 3×3 set of the chairs, so I bought some black mat board and Paul found a black frame still in its wrapping from an abandoned project. A few weeks ago I bought a mat cutter partly with a voucher I got for my birthday. It’s rather nifty, I have to say. Makes the job very easy, but it has limitations. The guides only work for single hole cutting, so to cut the nine holes for my friend’s set I had to use it more like a ruler – pressing down and hoping the board didn’t shift mid-cut. But it worked just fine:
When I posted a pic to show my friends, another put her hand up for a collection – this time just five.
The leftover fifteen made a 5×3 grid, bigger than the first one, and to get them to fit in a standard sized frame I made the holes smaller, cropping each artwork to show only the chair and background papers. That meant I had to redraw two that were too large, so it took most of a morning. When it was done I wrapped it in cellophane.
Next I tackled the kitchenalia theme. Theses were much easier to frame because the artworks are all in sheets of six.
The Nature’s Remnants series is going to be a much bigger challenge to frame, involving a bit of woodworking. I’ve looked at the tools and accessories artworks and they’ll require the same preparation as the toys and kitchenalia. It’s makes sense to get them out of the way first while I have the right tools out, so it looks like I’ll be changing the order I’m tackling the themes again.