The Old Frame Shop is Open for Business

 My shipping box is pretty much done now (plastic sealing tape went on most places yesterday). so today I turned to the process of framing the work.   First step in that process was to get a piece of mat board from the supply I keep in the basement.  I have some in the Studio, but I don't know if there is enough there, so better to be safe than sorry and bring a piece with me.  Once I got up there, the next step was to take out the prints I expect to frame and put in the show and measure them.  The two already in frames are slightly different dimensions, so I thought it best to check these out and write down the measurements.  All were 11" x 14", two horizontal, and one vertical.  

I cleared off my table and got out my homemade mat cutting machine.  Essentially it's a double flat board with a mounting for a big metal straightedge, and a wooden strip that holds the mat in place, held down with a C-clamp at one end (also holds it all to the table) and a squeeze clamp at the other.  Windows to be removed are drawn onto the back of each piece in pencil, and a hand held bevel cutter slides along the straightedge to cut it.  It works every time and can handle any size I have ever tried to cut.  

As expected, I had one good piece of mat board in the Studio. and one that was a bit blemished, and no amount of eraser work could fix it.  I set that aside and got the one I had left in my car.  It had a Pearl sticker on it, and that chain went out of business a long time ago, so I have had this one in my supply for a while.  One little problem- the top side was not the same shade of bright white I had used for all the others.  However, the back side was, so I found a section that had nothing printed on it and used that.  Problem solved.  

I started by cutting out the full size (frame size) pieces, then marking the back sides with pencil lines for the size window I wanted to cut, then used my bevel cutter to make perfect windows.  A photo of this set up is shown below:

I brought the window mats and the prints home to be framed, along with my roll of linen tape.   I can do that step at on a table at home.  Then all I have to do is print out labels to put on the back, place them in my shipping box, seal it up, and take it to the place to ship out.  Before then, I need to contact the gallery and let them know all the information about everything, but I have all that now.

I always put on music while I work, and today it was a loose disc from my rock/pop book, a home burned collection of the music of Matthew Sweet.  (blogged about back in June of 2020 if you want to know more)  Sweet probably should have been a bigger star- a very good instrumentalist and vocalist- but I don't think he ever had the look of a rock star, and in the age of videos and talk show appearances, that probably matters.