Transcripts
1. Printing and framing welcome: [MUSIC] Hey, I'm Denise Love, and I want to welcome
you to class. I'm the founder of
2 Lil' Owls Studio, which is my art and photography business that I started in 2012. I've been doing online
workshops since about 2014. The workshop that I'm
sharing with you today, I know you're going to love, it's a small part of my
bigger blooming workshop. It's all about
printing and framing. I'm going be framing
photographs in here, some of my photography art. But this would be
perfect if you were doing original art on paper or if you were doing
fine art prints or any type of photography. I'm going be sharing with you
my resources for printing, different types of paper, price ranges, lead times, and then I'm going
to frame a piece for you with some custom framing with a mat
and without a mat and share some of my
framing resources with you. I know you're going
to love this. I got tons of good stuff to share with you and
I hope you love it. I'll see you in class. [MUSIC]
2. Printing your photos: [MUSIC] In this video, I
want to talk about printing your photos and the
different printers that I have got sitting
before you hear. I've printed with a lot
of different printers, but I went ahead and had several different
samples printed out for this workshop so that I
had an excuse to print stuff [LAUGHTER] because I don't print as much as I should. It gave me a really fun chance to try out papers that
I haven't tried before, to look at pricing and
to see how long it took for different printers
to ship things to me. I have used My Photo Pipe, which is a printer local to me. I have used Bay Photo
in some of these. I've used Giclee Today. I've used Mpix and I've
used CG pro prints for Canvas just to give you a wide range of what's
available out there. There's certainly hundreds of online printers that
you could work with. What I'd recommend
you do is to order a sample photo in each
paper that you think you might be interested in and have it shipped to
you in a small size. Something like this size, which is the size that
comes out of your camera, which is an eight by 12. If you're on a regular camera, like a Canon or an icon. I want you to maybe print
an 8 by 12 or smaller. You could do like a 4
by 6 if you wanted, just like a little
deck size of examples. Just see the differences
of each paper and each printer and how
long it takes to get. The reason I say that is
because the shipping times varied on these
and it's going to make a big deal if you're
in a crunch for print. As I talk about the
different prints, I'll tell you ship
times that it took me. What I would recommend
you do is get a sample pack of the papers
that they happen to offer. For Bay Photo, I think you can get probably a sample
pack of the prints. What I like about
these is it tells what each paper is at the
bottom of the samples. This is a really good way to see if you like the
thickness of the paper. If you like the
surface on the paper, if you like the texture
that they've added, I definitely recommend
you buy the sample pack. I have the Bay
Photo sample pack. Also have a Giclee
Today sample pack and the Giclee Today, just as a spoiler has become my new favorite
source because of pricing and their
prints are beautiful. This sample pack was $3. I don't remember if I picked
up this sample packet of photography show because I go to imaging USA when
it comes to town. I may have picked these up
there because I also have paper samples that I
think I actually got the Moab samples from
the Moab vendor. I have had them all samples which I think I got from
the hand them all vendor. But if you ever happen
across where you can get sample papers
of some of these, then definitely grab
those if you say go to a photography store
or something. I apologize if the
light is changing, the sun is coming in
and out of the clouds. Let me see if I can fix
some of that. There we go. Bay Photo, Giclee Today, any of them that you can
order a sample pack or you can call them and say can you
send me a pack of samples? It's usually a couple of $s to cover their cost of
printing and shipping. Totally worth it. That's
where I want to start. As far as printing goes, you get into what
preferences you have there. If you go with a
regular printer, you're probably going to get photographic prints which
are going to be luster, gloss, semi gloss,
matte, things like that. This one here is on photograph
paper and they're fine. They serve their purpose. They're not super thick. I'd say this is probably
like 10 mils thick, maybe nine mils thick,
something like that. This is one that I got
at my local printer. But the longer you go and
do this and maybe you want fine art prints that are a little more special than
a plain photograph paper, then you might look into some of these other papers because
they really do make these art prints that
I have stand out so beautifully and just add
that extra oomph to things. I love it. The first flights I tried and I have different
prints here from them. I have the photograph, luster paper and this is a
hand them all photo rag paper. This is more like 20
or 21 mils thick. It's a super heavy paper. It's mat, it's not shiny, which is my own
personal preference. You'll have to decide
on your prints, the samples that you print, do you like the shiny? Do you like the matte?
You got to keep in mind usually these will
be framed under glass. The glass has a shine to it, so maybe the matte will still look shiny with the glass on it. I keep all these things in mind and I prefer to
print a matte print. Then when the glass is on it, the glass can be the little
bit of shine it's getting. Now My Photo Pipe, I don't have the
pricing of these because I actually
had these samples for quite a long time because I printed them to do
some art projects. Then also printed
a very large one recently to give to a neighbor. But the pricing of My
Photo Pipe is very similar to the
pricing of Bay Photo. When I tell you those
Bay Photo prices because actually wrote those on
the back of my prints. You'll know that My Photo
Pipe fits in there with the standard pricing of
most of these printers. The reason why I'm showing you this big one is because I
found out the hard way. Let's say this is a 20 by
30 print, for instance. You can go get a ruler and
tell you what it is exactly. But that's not really my point. The point is you'll notice, let me get my ruler here. You'll notice that I have a white frame around this print. This is a 16 by 24, now we know. [LAUGHTER] You'll notice
I have a white frame around the print
and I thought, wow, look how cool that is because that's the first
one I did that with. Then I printed some of these with white frames around
it and I really loved it. Then it dawned on me that
I ordered 16 or was it 16? I ordered this size 16 by 24 to go into perhaps a
standard ish size frame. I thought that the
size that I ordered, that the white would be
in addition to that. I thought that the white would then just extend further out and my actual print size here
would be the standard size. But really that ended
up being 14 by 22. Because whatever the
widest size you order, they just shrink the photo in there to make that
white frame around it. You may have a printer that will add the white on top
of whatever your art size, finished size should be. That's not what they did. They shrunk the photo in that final size and I didn't
realize they did that. I'm pretty much guaranteeing that that's going to
be a custom size, that would need to be framed, not a standard size. Let's say you're printing 8 by 10 prints and you're
trying to sell those at an art show and you're
expecting people to be able to go and buy an 8 by 10
frame this lipid into. If it shrinks it in that, then they're going
to have a border in that 8 by 10 size that you
might not have intended. I just wanted to point that out while we were
looking at these. But look how beautiful
that is and that's on the handle mall rag photo
paper and it's so beautiful, it's nice and thick. I was super pleased
with how that came out. Even more so than the
earlier prints that I printed because I'm just
like everybody else. The longer I photograph, hopefully the
better I'm getting. The prints that I printed
this year are just stunning. Let's look at some of
the other things I have here from some of the other
printers that I tried. These are the first prints that I printed and
I printed these for myself so I could frame and
hang them here in my house. I have one that I've put
in a cheap frame too, just to show you how
beautiful that is. In a inexpensive frame, they turn out really beautiful. Now, the thing about this set, this is a set of Giclee
prints from Mpix. At the time that I ordered, they only had one or two papers. I really feel like
it's the one paper because I think I
would have picked a different paper to try
out some different choices. But they had the
paint one paper. They only had a set number of sizes and that was all
options that you got. I ordered a set, six
of these so that I can frame several of these
and hang them in my art room, which have not done yet. Simply because I don't love the inexpensive frame that
I got to put them all in, so it's probably good. I didn't frame them
so I could talk about them here [LAUGHTER] These are Giclee
print from Mpix, and they all ran. These are 12 by 18, which is I wanted
these to be finished Size 12 by 18 with a white border on top of
that, but they didn't. They did 12 by 18 and they shrunk the photo within
that to give me a border. So I don't know that
I would do that again for anything I'm printing, because if I want
to slip this into a standard frame
like I have here, this came from Target. Luckily they have
11 by 17 frames, which accounts for
that whitespace that they put around here when I
ordered a 12 by 18 print. You can sometimes get some odd
sizes in a standard frame. But if you're wanting a
12 by 18 and you want it, it truly be at 12 by 18, don't order it with
a white border. Lesson learned. I like these because they're
really beautiful in Matte. These ran about $26 and some
change for a 12 by 18 size. Just want to tell you
the pricing to give you an example of what you're
going to spend each place. Most of them are within a
$ of two of each other. These took I want to say about
a week-and-a-half to get. So they didn't take very long. It took about a week-and-a-half. The ones from my local
printer the My Photo Pipe, those were printed
in a couple of days, 3-5 business days, I
think is what they quote. You could go downtown and pick it up if you needed
something really fast. So if I were you, I would definitely research local printers and have some samples printed
and see the lead time. Because if you get into
a crunch like you've got some stuff in a gallery and you have somebody that comes
in and wants to print this week because they're a designer and they're
doing a house. You want to have an option
where you can get stuff fast possibly then a local
printer is the way to go. Otherwise, but it's probably the most expensive way to go because they don't have
to be the discount guy. Whereas some of these online places are looking to pick up more and more and more business and their model is volume, not necessarily the person
walking in off the street. You may find some
better pricing, but you're waiting to
get it in the mail. These took about a
week-and-a-half, I believe to get, and this size was $26-$27. This is one of the ones
that I got from Bay Photo. I put the pricing
here on the back. I had two prints printed. One of them I'm
getting custom frames, so I'll show you that
in another video. This is a 12 by 18. It feels very similar to
this paper from Mpix, but this is not a Giclee print. This is a Digital Fine
Art archival print on photograph paper
rather than a Giclee. Giclee means is the creme
de la creme of printing. The reason why I
like a Giclee print, they're printed on a very
specific Epson printer. I think it's a Stylus 4900. They put out pigment ink instead of the inks that
the other printers used and their archival
rated for 200 years. Regular digital prints
aren't rated for that long, but they're still
really nice quality just depending on the
route you want to go. But I do like Giclee because it just adds that extra bit of prestige to whatever
you're doing and it's archival and it
will last the longest. If you're selling
it at art fairs or galleries or to customers, that might be a consideration
that you want to take in. This is from Bay Photo,
it's not a Giclee, it's just a regular luster
print and this size ran $11. The one I'm having framed, which I don't have
on the table today, I got in a deep
Matte velvet paper, which is very similar
to this Hahnemuhle. It's very thick. It's a
beautiful velvety print. It's crisp, it's clear. It's really stunning. That ran about $25, 24.75. So that's pretty good
pricing, I think. But if you went with
the Giclee Today, that same size is going to run, I think I wrote it on the
back of this let's see. If you got that same size and
the deep Matte from Mpix, it will be 26.14. So a little bit more for that same
just photograph paper, not a heavy paper. If you want Giclee Today, that same size ran
between $10 and $16 for the Giclee prints in the different paper
options that they have. What I like about
that is I can get a Giclee print
from Giclee Today. This size in the
Hahnemuhle paper. I'm going to spend 50-60 percent less than I do at the
regular photo lab. Which is pretty significant. I'm blown away by that. These two prints I
got from Bay Photo, this is the Moab
Somerset museum rag, and this is the Moab
Entrada bright rag. These ran 24.40, and this one is 25.70. So $25 will say for 8 by 12. So that's not a very big print and you're going to
spend 25 bucks for that. Now, this is the same size. I got these from Giclee Today. This is the Somerset velvet, it's Moab Somerset velvet. This one is the archival Matte, which is super thick. This one, the Archival Matte, would be closest in comparison
to a photographic paper, but it's thicker than
the photographic paper. It's very nice and
crisp and clear. This one only ran me $4.91. What I really liked about the
options that they did was, let me grab this. They sent these packaged
in their own little bag. Which let me tell you if
you need to have prints and bags and you print
out different sizes, and you have to provide
the bag yourself, you have to buy big
packages of those bags. Whereas if you order a print with it's bag, then you've
already got the bag. I thought that was
fantastic and it didn't really add hardly anything
to the print price. I want to say didn't
add anything, but maybe I just didn't notice. So $4.91 versus $25.
Keep this in mind. This one on the
heavier rag paper, this is the Somerset
velvet and I think the Hahnemuhle rag
and the other rags are very similar in price. This one ran me $7.11 versus almost identical papers that it's different papers, but they do carry the
same papers $25, $4-$7. I'm just blown away in my price comparison and my
print pieces that I got. I have decided that Giclee Today may be my go-to
printer from here forward, because they were 50-60-70 percent less on everything
that I priced out. Let's talk about how long
it took to get these. My local printer took 3-5 business days and I could drive down
there and get it. If I had it shipped to me, I'm guessing it would take about a week-and-a-half
to two weeks. Bay Photo was the very fastest of all the printers
that I tried here. They shipped out in
the very next day. I ordered on a Thursday, they notified me on
Friday that it shipped. I received them on the
following Thursday. So one week is about what
that took me to get. I was very impressed
with the shipping time, but not as impressed with the pricing after going
with Giclee Today. So these were all part of that. The Mpix one's took me I want to say about
a week and a half. They were again up there just
standard in that pricing, but those took me about
a week-and-a-half. So Mpix about a week-and-a-half, Bay Photo the fastest
they took a week. The Giclee Today took
the longest to get. I placed all these
orders on Thursday. They didn't even ship
the order for a week. They do have messages on their website about
COVID blocking, extending some of
their shipping times and things that they can do, so that could be part of it, but I really just
think it takes longer [LAUGHTER] because maybe they're busier because
their pricing is so good and their
prints look amazing. They didn't ship
for a week and then after they shipped it
took an additional week. It was like almost two weeks to the day that I ordered
it, but I got those. If you're needing
something faster, not the best option does
take about two weeks to get. But what I do, I'm just hanging stuff in
my house. I'm giving gifts. I'm not displaying galleries
like a friend of mine. A friend of mine
displays galleries. They have interior
designers come in and say, I need this print. I'm doing a house
for whatever reason, and I need it by
tomorrow [LAUGHTER]. She will run down to
local printer bag that they print it really fast. It takes a couple
of days really, but she'll go get
it and deliver it. I mean, she's got to have
things a little bit faster. Some of those things you
need to keep in mind, I wouldn't print a
whole run of stuff. If you're offering
say 25 of a print, I wouldn't print 25 of them
right up front because you're already setting yourself
up for some failure. You can have damage, you can have something
scratch one of these, you're already cutting into the age that that
print is going to last because now you've
printed it and maybe you don't sell it for
five years, who knows. I would print things
as they sell. If it's not already printed and they wanted a
different size, or they wanted a
print and you only have a display up at a
gallery or something. I would print pretty close
to the time that you're going to be selling
things if you could, that's going to be the freshest, newest, non-damaged
print that you can have. The other thing I printed on, that's a really popular option, is I printed a
Canvas and there are several places out there
that print canvases. I like CG pro prints because all the prints that I get have always been
really beautiful. They finish it
nicely on the back. The sides you can have
finished in a color, or you can have finished
with more print. They've got tons and
tons of options, and they're just
really beautiful. Price-wise, this is a
12 by 18 Canvas print. I could have printed it without the frame, that
I've got on here. That would around about $50. Really not bad at all
if you're printing some beautiful canvases to
hang up in an art gallery, or in a booth at an art fair,
or something like that. You can get some fairly
large Canvas pieces for not too much money
and they're ready to hang even without the
little floater frame here. I wanted this one with
a floater frame just because I wanted to see
what it looks like. I have a place I can hang it and I thought that
would look nice. The floater frame
made this print $74. It added about 25
bucks it wasn't bad. It's beautiful with
the floater frame makes it just a
tiny bit more posh. In this instance. In my opinion, it's
really beautiful. This is another option
for you and I will list all these printers
under this video. What I recommend you do is get some paper samples from each one that you're
interested in. I highly recommend
this G clay today. The way I heard about
them was I'm in a lot of art groups and people are
always asking in those groups, who do you use for
your art prints? They're taking photographs of things they've
painted on Canvas, whereas I'm printing
digital artwork. But still, who cares? It's the same end product. When we're done, we
get a beautiful print. Everybody recommended
in that group, G clay today is
one of the places because it's a beautiful color. It's got great paper options, and the pricing
was so fantastic. After all those people
were recommending those to other artists. I'm like I got to check
this place out because maybe I wanted to have
that for my prints. They're all beautiful,
but for the price, I really liked them, but
they did take longer to get. I'm going to list
all these vendors underneath this video so you can check them
out for yourself. There are hundreds of online vendors that
you could go with. There's Artifact Uprising as another vendor that I
like for photo books. Somebody told me they use
like Nations Photo Lab. Now some of these regular
photo labs though, I noticed only offer
regular photo paper. That's not what my goal was. I wanted art papers. Art paper-wise Bay Photo has by far the largest
selection of art papers. I believe if you've looked through the
all their selections, I think they carry
every single Moab and every single one
had them all and every single
photographic option. They do have the widest range. They also print on acrylic. They print on metal. My gallery friend uses them
for gigantic metal prints. It's come out stunning every
time that she's gotten that, she's gotten a gigantic acrylic
print that was stunning. If you're looking for
the most options, something that'll give
you a stunning print on different surfaces, Bay Photo is the way to go. If you're just looking for
some really great prices on the Criminal
Crim the G clays. Then I like G Clay today. Every printer is going to have different options that
they're going to offer you. I would go with one that
works within your budget. That's got a good reputation, that can ship fairly quickly. You don't want to be waiting a month to get something if you can avoid it unless
you've got the time. What works? What I would get is a print of everything
you're interested in. Maybe some small prints
like they've done. There are sample
prints or get a sample set from each company
that you can. Then you can compare
what do you really like for your artwork. Hope you found this
really helpful. Talking about
different print labs. Most people won't tell you
where they got stuff printed, or what it costs, or
what they recommend, so I hope that this made
some of that easier for you and I hope you check
out some of these resources. I will see you back in class. [MUSIC]
3. Paper Options: [MUSIC] In this video, let's
talk about paper options. I went through all
the prints that I had printed at one of the
other videos of the class, but I didn't go over different paper options and what you might
consider for yourself. There's a few different
paper companies that make fine art paper
for printing. The two most recognized
are Moab and Hahnemuhle. I'm most familiar with
the Hahnemuhle because my local printer uses the
Hahnemuhle rag when they print. But they do offer lots
of different choices. Every single one of
these is going to make your print look
slightly different. Even on some of these
ones that I printed, I discovered that with this, I had something printed
on a very thick paper, and it was the Somerset Velvet versus this Archival
Matte Paper. Out of these two, the one on the top, the colors are a little richer. The print came out a
little more contrasty and almost popped off the paper a little bit more than
the one on the bottom. I actually liked that better. I liked that a little
bit more contrast, and I wouldn't have
known that if I had not printed these. Some of the reason is because
this paper is probably a little more porous
because it's got a little texture on it
and it's very thick. I think the ink might sink
into the paper a tiny bit. It's actually making it even
a little more matte than my original editing because I like to edit with that
matte feel to it. I liked the one that came out brighter and more contrasty. The paper does make
a big difference. If you're looking at a sample pack like this
and you're thinking, well, I don't know what I want. Some of these are bright white, some of these are more
of an ivory color, white, some are thicker, some have a shine, some don't have a shine. What am I going to like? I like the Hahnemuhle photo. [LAUGHTER] But there's a couple of different Hahnemuhle Photo. There's Hahnemuhle
Photo Matte Fibre, Hahnemuhle Photo
Matte Fibre Duo. Then there's Hahnemuhle
Photo Silk Baryta, it's B-A-R-Y-T-A, I'm
not sure what that is. Then there's Hahnemuhle
Photo Glossy white instead of ivory. Even though I'm saying I
Iike Hahnemuhle Photo, you can see there's
a whole bunch of Hahnemuhle Photo options. I'm usually going for a
matte photo rag personally. There's a Hahnemuhle
Photo Canvas. Basically what Hahnemuhle
Photo means is that's paper they've created to
print photos on. So I like the photo rag. I like the rag and
the rag is thicker. This big one's printed
on it's very thick. It's not thin and flimsy. The print is beautiful, crispy clear,
beautiful contrast. It looks almost
identical to what I was seeing on my computer
screen that I edited. This is a nice general
paper photo rag for. If you just don't
know what you want, go with that, because that is definitely
a beautiful choice. The Moab papers, they have even more papers than the Hahnemuhle or their
sample deck is a lot bigger, but they tell you sizing
and show you a sample of the paper and I think you'd have to get this from Moab itself. The Bay Photo company that I use actually uses all the Moab's
and the Hahnemuhle's. If you get their sample
sets like Giclee Today, this is archival
matte, beautiful. This is a really nice
thickness of paper. It's not as thick as this rag, but it's a nice thickness. Look how crispy clear that
print jumps out at you. I also like this Moab
Entrada bright white. It a little bit thicker paper, and again, nice, crispy print on
there, love that. This is the Hahnemuhle
Photo rag specifically. It is also nice heavy paper. Really nice in comparison
to the Moab one. The print is again nice and clear and crispy
coming off of there. Out of Giclee Today is, those three are all beautiful. If I had looked at all my
samples before I ordered this, this Somerset Velvet, which I think is a Moab paper, I actually did not
like the sample. If I had looked at
this before I ordered, then I probably
would've known that. But the thing I did was
I ordered two prints and I ordered a sample
pack at the same time, so they came together. But if I'd had this upfront, I might have looked at
this and thought, oh, I don't like that because
you'll know on that print, I did not love the print either. So I would've known that
if I had these samples. This is the Epson
Cold Press Bright. This is a nice paper
that's nice and thick, but it's like a
watercolor paper. If you're a watercolor artist, that would be really nice, or if you wanted a
watercolor texture on your print for some reason, if this was like a digital
piece of art that you thought that that watercolor
texture would enhance, that's a fine choice. They also have this
studio watercolor, which is again just
a watercolor paper, not my favorite for
photographic prints, but it is available. They've got the studio canvas, which that's okay if
you want your print to be a canvas print, but not wrapped, then that would be how you could
get a canvas print. Then they've got the Moab
Entrada Rag Natural. This is just like
this other Moab, but the paper is a slight creaminess to it
rather than being bright white. That's got its place.
Both of those print out nice and beautiful
and crispy clear, but this is not a white paper. It's an ivoryish color paper. You can see that. That's a good choice. They
also have chrome metallic. If you need something
on a really shiny like metallic paper, like my friend that's in
the gallery she printed a series of a girl
in milk series. She actually printed those on metallic paper and
they're really beautiful. If you needed that metallic
look to your photo, they do offer a metallic Giclee. Then a regular luster paper
is the final choice there. That's good if you
want it to look more like a true photograph, a little bit more glossy
than the matte papers. If you need that extra depth, that little bit of gloss adds, it does have a
tiny bit of shine, whereas these other ones,
they don't shine at all. There's no glare at all that you're going to
get off of those. Giclee Today has such a nice
selection and they have picked the very best of the best of those
papers to do those. Now if you switch over
to the Bay Photo, they have the most
paper choices. I feel like they have
all of the Moab's, all of the Hahnemuhle's,
and then they have, this is their photograph set. But they have all the
photograph papers too. You've got things
with a linen texture, pebble texture, sat and
laminate luster paper. Look how pretty that is. Fuji deep matte velvet. You've got the luster
coating on your print, so you can get whatever
print and have them coat that with
the luster coating. You've got the Kodak silk. You've got the Fuji matte. You've got the Kodak
Endura luster E paper, Kodak Endura glossy F paper. These are the
photographic prints and they're definitely
quite glossy. Then you've got the Kodak
Endura metallic paper. Another good choice if
you're feeling like you need something
with metallic choices, they do have those. Fuji pearl, Fuji
flex, canvas texture. This canvas texture has a
little bit of shine to it. Not much, it's more
like a luster. You've got a glossy coating that you could add to anything. You've got a glossy laminate
on the luster paper, so you could add some more
gloss coating to something. You've got a satin laminate
on the metallic paper. You can have a
metallic that's not as shiny as the other
metallic choice. You can see photograph
paper-wise, you have every paper
that's out on the market. It seems like Bay
Photo seems to offer. Then they also offer all
of these art papers. Also, they have the
very biggest selection of papers of anybody
that I've seen. I would price things out
and print a couple of prints on different
papers and then decide, do you like it thicker?
Do you like it thinner? Because I will say especially on all of
these that I got printed. The Impix ones, these are Giclee but
they're really thin paper. They're the thickness
of a photograph paper. When I put a piece of tape on the front of
this accidentally, I peeled off part of the
paper and it was so thin and flimsy that I decided
it was not my favorite. You might look at this and see how beautiful that
print is and think, well, I don't care about the
thickness; it's being framed. That doesn't matter to me. Print a few from
everybody in small sizes and look at each one and then decide for yourself,
what do you like? I like these that
are really sturdy, heavy papers, but like a
beautiful print on it. You're not going to know
some of this just by looking here on the screen and me telling you what I like. I want you to check out
their samples and print some small prints or get the sample pack and then print
some of your own and see, do you really like that? Is that really what you want that piece of art
represented as? I hope you found paper
choices helpful, and I will see you
back in class. [MUSIC]
4. Print sizes: [MUSIC] In this video, I want to
talk about print sizes, because when I first started out in using like real
cameras for photography rather than my point and shoot, I never understood
that the picture coming out of your camera wasn't magically every
size out there available, like a 5 by 7 and 4
by 6 and an 8 by 10, and all of that stuff. I don't know. I thought magically the picture
just made all those sizes, [LAUGHTER] but it doesn't. That was actually one of
the first surprising things when I started out was my camera doesn't take
a standard size photo. If you're using a regular DSLR, that is a 2/3 ratio picture, which, to put that in
a really easy term, it shoots an 8 by 12 size photo. You'll know that 8 by 12
doesn't sound standard because we've all grown up with 8 by 10 as a standard size. When I was doing
photography competitions, and they were like, bring your photo in matted so that we can put that
up and judge it in a mat. We would go to the local
Hobby Lobby or Michaels and the frame size
is for 8 by 10. It was like, "Wow, this
just blew my mind. How am I supposed to
get an 8 by 12 mat?" Now you can purchase
stuff like this because some of these
non-traditional sizes are becoming available
at places like Michaels, and I was just in
there yesterday, and I even noticed they have several frame
options in 8 by 12. I was like, "Wow, look at this. They've never had this before." I was actually pretty
excited about that because they had about 10
different frames in 8 by 12 that I could just buy
and hang in my house rather than getting a
custom frame if I wanted. I was pretty excited about that. But my point is, this camera takes a 2 by 3. This camera is just a one of
those Olympic pin cameras that I thought would be a
nice little travel camera. At some point, I liked it
because it was colored. I was like, "I want that
white camera [LAUGHTER]." This camera takes a 4
by 5 ratio picture, which is not the same
thing as a 2 by 3. A 4 by 5 does take
an 8 by 10 picture. If I'm taking photos
with this camera, and I'm expecting to get the same size print
out of this camera. It's not going to do that. It's actually going to be
missing these two inches, and the picture coming
out of this camera is only going to be this big without me cropping
it in Photoshop. This is important
things to know. The reason that is, is because you're not
always going to be printing the exact ratio that
your camera produces. Maybe you're doing an art fair, and you want to arrange a
print to offer somebody, and maybe you want 11 by 14, and maybe you want 12 by 18, and maybe you want 20 by 30. All of those are
different ratios. If you don't purposely take
your photo with that in mind, and say compose it and leave some space that
could be cropped off. You're going to be surprised when you get some
of your prints in and part of your
photo is cropped in, and you're like, "Wait a minute. That's not the whole picture. That's not how I composed
it. What happened here?" I don't want you
to be surprised. What I'd recommend you do is take your photo with whatever
camera that you have, and then at the time
that you decide you're wanting to sell prints or frame thing for your house, or offer them in art
fairs or whatever, you need to go into Photoshop or whatever editing
program you're using, and you need to spec
out a paper on there. Make a file that's 8 by 10 and
make a file that's 5 by 7, and make a file that's 11 by 14. Make a file in every size
that you want to print, and then pull that
photo into that file and then crop it where
you want to crop it. You don't want to
leave the cropping up to a random
computer algorithm, if you're uploading it
to an online source, and you don't want to leave that crop decision to a printer. You want to make the decision on where to crop that photo, which will also help you determine print sizes
you don't want to offer. If I print this in a size
that crops it way too much, and it's really sacrificing the integrity of the
piece of art I created, then I know I can't
sell it in that size. If I don't want to crop off all this stuff for an 8 by 10. I don't need to sell an 8 by 10. I need to sell an 8 by 12. I just want you to be
aware of this because until I started the photography
and doing print shows, I didn't know that photos just didn't magically fit
every size [LAUGHTER]. I hope that was helpful, and I will see you
back in class [MUSIC].
5. Signing Your Prints: [MUSIC] Let's talk about
signing your prints and should you sign them. If you're printing and
you're selling these, and you want to be the artist and let everybody know and you have collectors
and things like that, you're definitely going to
want to get to the point that you're signing your prints. Usually, if the print has
a border on it like this, that is a really nice
way to sign the print because you've got
somewhere easy to sign it. What you're wanting to
do is sign it in pencil because if these were say, 100 years from now in a museum, somebody could then
analyze that signature and know that it's a graphite and you actually
signed it yourself. Whereas if you signed it
in pen, it's negligible and it may not be able to
prove that you signed it and rather somebody just
printing that on there, stamping that on there. You want to sign it in pencil and you want to sign your
signature on this lower right. You want to put the title
of it, if it's got a title, right here in the middle. If this is an edition, like a one out of
50 or whatever, you want to put
that edition number here on the lower left. That's the proper
way to sign a print. Not on the print itself, but on the paper below the print if you have one that's
framed out like this. If you have framed
prints like this, then what you would generally
do is sign on the mat that's matting this out. You would sign the
same information. You would sign your
name, the title, the edition, one of
12 or whatever it is, on the mat below that. You can also sign it on
the back of the print. I would also do that in pencil. I'd be very careful doing that because depending on
how you press down, you may see that signature raised through on
the print itself, which would be terrible. If you're going to do
that, be very careful. But usually it's signed on
the print just underneath or on the mat matting
that picture. I hope you found that helpful. Should you sign your work? If it's early work
and you feel like maybe you're not going to
be some super famous artist that everybody is
going to recognize, that's your choice as to whether you choose to sign it or not. But what if sometime
down the road, you do become highly
recognized and your work does become
very valuable, the signature does
add to the value. It proves you photographed
and printed it. If it was an edition, you tell people what
edition they got. It does add to the
value down the road so I would definitely
consider signing your work. It also is a source of pride. You're putting your name on it, you're letting everybody
know you did it, so definitely consider signing everything that you put out. If it's a regular print,
do it on the mat. If it's a print that's
got the white edge on it, do it just below the print. I'll see you back
in class. [MUSIC]
6. Framing choices: In this section, I want to talk about framing your prints. I'm going to go all the way from the least expensive options I've tried to the most expensive. Just to give you
a range of what's available and that you
might be interested in. The very least expensive
things I've tried has been just some plain
black gallery, faint framing with
a very thin frame. Two-inch matte might be
one-and-a-half-inch, and you mount your
picture in that, and that's probably the least expensive route that I've tried. This ran about, I want
to say $20 a frame. These are 11 by 17 because
when I printed them, I printed that print with
a border around it not realizing that shrunk my
photo into the dimensions, the constraints of the 12 by 18, it ended up being
an 11 by 17 print. I was actually lucky
enough to find some of these frames in stock at Target. Some places do stock, some of the larger size
selections that you can get. Now, what I don't like
about these for my home, they're perfect if
you're doing a show or you're doing an art show or gallery show because
most galleries want black or white frame, white matte and then your piece of art
mounted in that they don't want some colorful
creative framing. That's perfect for that. But for my home, I don't
like it because it does look inexpensive and the
matte was too white. Didn't really give me a
choice of matte colors. When I hung it up,
it just looked kind of inexpensive and cheap compared to what I
thought I wanted this photo to look like
hanging in my living room. This has its place
but it may not be the best solution
for home framing. Things that you're hanging in your home and that was meta, it wasn't even wood. I have gotten nicer frames at Target before that have thicker, which actually have
other examples here. This is another frame I
got in stock at Target. It is a wood frame. Maybe it's plastic,
it might not be wood. Has a creamy-colored matte and I've mounted one of
my cyanotype in it. That's okay. I had these hanging in my art room for a while. But I almost feel like there's
too much matte to picture. It's not necessarily
my favorite either, but it was another inexpensive
option for me to try out when I wanted
to hang some of my current work
that I was doing. This I got at the Michaels. My recommendation
to you on frame searching for things
that are inexpensive, that maybe you can get in
stock and frame fairly quickly is to try one
of your craft stores, Michael's maybe Hobby Lobby. I don't know, I
haven't looked there. Target or if you're
in another country, one of your local craft
stores look around and see what type of framing
they happen to offer. This actually got at Michaels
and what I like about it, it is a wood frame. It's double-matted, that made it actually a
little more luxurious. Then, my larger cyanotype original print fit
right in there. I actually did think that was rather beautiful
for a choice. It was not very expensive, also, I'd say this was around $30. For these bigger 12 by 18 frames and even
some larger ones, I found that were they were $40. This really is the
most reasonable route. The reason why you can
get such nice framing in some cases is because
they're buying in bulk. They are stocking
standard sizes or the most common ones
are likely to sell, and they're getting
that discount on that original
purchase upfront. So they're able to
pass that on to you. When they're buying in bulk, you're getting it
for a lot cheaper than something you're
ordering a one-off of. This is another creative
way to frame something. This is a print of
a paint palette, obviously that I've collected
from another artist. This is a frame I found in Target and it's
really nice because it's beautiful on
my wall where I have old gallery of
art things hanging. But this is a fun option, it's free-floating, you
can see right behind it. Whatever wall it's hanging on, that's what frames
out that photo. Super fun was really inexpensive,
that was really fun. Another thing that I got at
Target is not white or black, but it's a natural wood frame. Again, it had a matte in it already and I just tried to slip my original piece
of artwork that I collected right into the frame. This one really does
look just as nice as something I've seen
the custom framers. Check out some of these local options that you
might find local to you. I happen to prefer Target. Michaels, you might
try Hobby Lobby. Those are my go-to places
to find in-stock framing. You could also look
at Dick Blick. Dick Blick has
custom framing also, but I've not had
really good luck with their custom framing it. They don't really
deliver here on time. They take longer than they say. I'm not sure if that's
just my experience or if that's company-wide. But that hasn't been
my best experience on custom framing, but they do have it. Look around at your
local sources, see what you can find. If you're framing something
to put in a show, look for black or white frame, white matte, and mount
your photo in it. If you're looking for
things to elevate your work because
the frame really has a chance to elevate
the work or make the work look terrible depending on how you
decide to frame it. I want to elevate it even further than it already is if you're just
looking at a print. I want it to add to
the whole ambiance of what I'm trying to say
with that piece of art so that when
you're looking at it, you can't wait to buy it,
hang it in your house. Keep that in mind.
You're adding to the whole field and
ambiance and you're elevating that piece
of work with the framing that you
choose to put it in. Respect that and go with your best option at
any time that you can. If you can afford a stock frame, go with a stock frame. You have a little more budget, step-up to a custom or
semi-custom type frame. Because the more you step up, the more options you get and the more elevated that
piece of work becomes. These are some of the
least expensive ways that I have tried
framing myself. Let me go ahead and
change out the table to the next little set of
frames, and I'll be right back. The next option I want to
talk about that you have for your framing is your
online custom framing, printing, everything
kind of package. I have a couple here. This one is a Canvas print, and I get these
from CG pro prints. They're really beautiful
and they're not very expensive and it is an excellent resource
for canvas prints. You can get it printed, the canvas itself, with
the print on the side, it turns the corner. You can get a color on
the side like black or whatever color in your print that you
want to have that. It comes already
ready to basically, hang if you order
just to Canvas. Then, I've ordered this
canvas in a frame. That's another choice
that you can add to this. Just to give you an example
of pricing on this canvas, this was a 12 by 18, and the canvas itself
was about $50. The framing added about $25. I spent about $75 for
this whole setup. I think that's super reasonable. If you're doing an art show
and mainly, you sell prints, but you want a few
statement pieces to hang up on the walls to really
draw people in, hopefully, to sell it
or to sell prints, this is a nice way to go. I think it would
be easier and to transport maybe less damaging because there's no
glass or anything. This would be a really nice way to have a couple of
statement pieces. If this is for your house, then I highly recommend this company because
these come out beautiful. I love that and it's not very
expensive for what you get. I've tried a couple of
different Canvas places, but this has been my favorite. The other one I've got here, this is from Fine
Art America and this is a print-on-demand site. This is a site where you would
upload a digital file of whatever your photo is and
they would print it on. They've got a couple
of paper choices. They will print it,
and then they would frame it in your
frame of choice. To give you a, for
instance, on this, I think this was about
$140 to print it, had it framed and sent in. This, I was really happy with. Now, I've gotten several
other things printed from them using the same frame and I wasn't as excited about the secondary prints that I got because for whatever reason, this cyanotype seemed to
just sing in this frame. The other ones didn't
look as great. The frame was great, the mat was great, but the print I put in,
it just didn't work as well for me as the
cyanotype did. Sometimes, I print stuff and
I'm just like, oh, that was the wrong frame choice and then that just
is what it is. It's going to have to be a
little bit of trial and error in there when you're ordering stuff because
I don't know about you, but I actually find it
very hard to imagine the whole piece framed
off of a little sample. At least online, you can
preview what the print looks like in the frame or digitally online
and I like that. But that being said,
I have ordered some that have not
been my favorite. But this one is one
of my very favorites. This is a great
print-on-demand thing. If you don't want to
deal with prints and framing and shipping
things to customers, they'll do all that for you. I do like this option. I've been very pleased with their framing and
what it looks like. In one of the custom
framing segments, I talk about adding a
dust cover to your print. I just want to show
you the back of this since I talk about
that in one of our custom framing
segments where I'm showing you how to actually
do your own custom frame. I just want to show you
how they've done it. They have done the brown craft
paper like I talked about. They've put it all
the way to the edge and they've just
glued that down. Now, you can glue that
down with wood glue. You could do Elmer's glue, any glue that's going to stick that paper to the frame is
all you're looking for. If you want to be truly
archival and you've used archival mat and
archival backing, then you can use
an acid-free glue. There are some glues
out there that are or even double-sided tape. If you've got a double-sided
stick of gum tape, that would be a good choice, but they've put the paper
to the edge and trimmed it. They have mounted
the hardware on after that dust
cover is on there. Then you can see at the bottom we have our little feet like I showed you in the segment
where we're framing. Just to give you an idea, they've also put the chain
on exactly like I've shown you in that later
segment that we do. I just wanted to
give you a preview. Now, the reason why you want a dust cover
possibly is because with all the in-stock
frames where you just take off the bag and put
the photo in and you screw, put the backpack on. The thing about that
is and it's fine. I have some of those
hanging in my house too. But what I found out is that if you don't have
a dust cover on here, the back then has
spacing between different elements that
moisture could get in or dust or insects. Eventually, maybe take a few years for this
to happen, eventually, you'll have dust
in the frame and insects that have
crawled in and died in the frame and a dust cover prevents
all of that. There is a nice reason
to have it if you go to a custom frame or they're
going to do that for you. If you're doing it at home,
you can just get some of that brown craft paper and attach that to the
back with adhesive, put your hardware on, put your little felty
things on and you're set. These are ones that all in one package
printed and frame it. These are the resources
that I've used. There are a lots
of them out there. There's red bubble,
there's Society 6, this is Fine Art America, this is CG pro prints. If you Google, print-on-demand, framing on-demand or
things like that, I'm sure that you can find
plenty of other resources. These are resources that I
have here in the States. If you're in another country, do some Google searching and see what resources
come up for you. Next, I'm going to go into
custom framing at home. I'll be right back. These are online custom
Frame Options and I'm using frame destinations and
that is because it was recommended in a framing class
I took several years ago. The lady that was showing
us how to frame a print for a photography show
was using that and that's what she is used in all her gallery showings
and everything. That's a source
that I have kept in my back pocket and I
have used several times. That being said, it's not the only resource
out there either. Again, these are resources I have here in the
United States. I actually Googled online
custom framing or, yeah, that's what I Googled online custom framing, and
tons of options came up. Definitely, do some
research there. I liked this company because somebody else had recommended. My best friend that
shows in galleries now, she also uses the
frame destinations and has really good things to say about the
frames that she gets. I felt really comfortable
using this company. What was really
nice is these only took about a week
and a half to get. As long as you are planning
a little bit ahead, you can order these,
frame them and deliver them within two weeks
easily, I believe. But it just depends on
what you're ordering and their lead time
at any given time. But I was very impressed with
the lead time to get these. This one, I actually
show you how to frame this archivally with
acid-free linen tape. Then when your order this, you want to specify acid-free
matting and backing, and then depending on what you select, will
determine pricing. I did not select
acid-free framing because this is just
going in my house, but I certainly could have. This was about $125. This is the 12 by 18 frame. I think this is 16 by 22
total size so 12 by 18 print, 16 by 22 total sides. That ran $124. I really liked that. That's very reasonable because not
long after I ordered these I visited the
custom frame shop and I hadn't been in a custom
frame shop for a while. For what I picked and
what she priced me, I was just like, oh my goodness. This was easily a
quarter of the price of custom framing for just a
moderately decorative frame. It was way less
even than that then the most expensive frame I
first picked out because, why would I like a
cheap frame, right? First frame I picked out had a
frame, had an insert, had another insert and it was $900 for this same size print, different print of some roses
that I took to have framed. I just lost my lunch
because I was like, are you kidding, $900? We need to go back
and look again. That's like a mortgage payment. Now, I have some
really great respect price-wise for how much it is to get a custom frame sent
to you ready to put your picture in because this company will make
any size you want, they'll send you
parts and pieces, they do it all, and they've got plenty of online documentation
and training and information on
their blog to help you further your own
knowledge in that part. Price-wise, I was really
pleased with the price. This is another frame
that I got from them. I got this one with no matt
because I wanted to show you in one of our next videos how to frame something when
you're not using a matt. We do no matt and matt in the tutorials I've
got coming for you. Look how nice and heavy and sturdy and beautiful
these frames are. Now, these don't
have a dust cover, so you remember in this last segment I showed you using a dust cover
and I could have just covered the whole
thing and then attached my hardware and then attached my feet to get that covered. But you'll also
notice I have gaps, and if I leave this
hanging long enough, you could see dust or moisture
or insects get in there. The dust cover is
a nice extra touch to protect archival
prints for the long term. But yeah, extremely
pleased with that. This was $38. This is an 8 by 12 print. The frame is a little
bigger than that so it's 8 by 12 here, so that's little
extra on top of that. It was $34. That's
really beautiful. I'm extremely happy with that. This is a peony that one
of my neighbors gave me. I told her at the time a couple of months ago that
when I made prints, I'd print her one
of the photos that I created with her peonies. Now that I have
custom-framed it for her, I can't wait to give
that to her for allowing me to cut some
of her beautiful flowers. This is by far probably my
favorite way to frame. I can get it archival, I get any size I want. Price-wise, it was extremely reasonable
for custom framing. I had a lot more choices
than anything I could find in the store because you probably have a couple of
hundred frame choices. You'll look at their frame page and maybe there's 20 there,
but out of those 20, they all have five
or 10 color choices. So you really have tons
of choices of frames, but there's still more limited
than true custom framing. But for anything that
I do here forward, I'm going to figure
out a way to make this work because after go into the custom
frame shop and being blown away at what I apparently like is the most expensive
frame they sell, I need to reign myself back into the $40 to $100 range
rather than the $900 range. I hope that is inspiring
for custom framing. If you're in another
country, because again, these are United
States resources, I would Google online
custom framing. That's how I found all the
other sources that I will list under this
video because I did find a lot of good sources for different custom
framing options. Let me show you now my last option here and
the most expensive. You'll notice that each
of these segments, I've gone from inexpensive
to medium to a little more expensive and
now to the most expensive. But with expense, you get more choices, and that is always a nice thing if you've got
something really special. Let me change these out. I'll be right back. Let's
talk about custom framing. Custom framing really is the creme de la
creme of framing. You get the most options. When I went into the
custom framer locally, there were easily more than 1,000 trim pieces
hanging on the wall, which let me tell you is
actually overwhelming. But they are by far the most beautiful
choices because I could get anything to highlight
each photo that I needed. I could get it mattered
with different matts, I could have a single matt, a double matted, I
could have it framed, I could have deep shadow frames, I could get anything really that you can imagine at
the custom framer. This is something I got
framed many years ago. This is something I got framed
and picked up yesterday. Let me tell you, I actually find framing a
little bit hard because I just cannot imagine what the
picture is going to look like in the frame just
based on a corner. Sometimes, you're going to make the perfect choice like this has been my favorite photo framed
for more than 20 years. I've had it that long, hangs in my bedroom, and it's really funny because the subject matter
is still life, and this I bought and
it's not digital. This was before photoshop and everything and
digital cameras. This is film camera
taken on one of those peel-apart films because
you can see the edging. None of this is
done in photoshop, it's a still life
with hydrangeas, and it's like a foreshadowing of maybe what I was
really interested in and wanted to go with my art
because now I take still lives and I do beautiful
setups with flowers. I just thought that
was funny when I was thinking about that
the other day that the art I collected more
than 20 years ago is in the same range of art that I like to create now
in the digital area. How funny is that? But this is one of my very
favorite frames. It's not something I've ever
seen somewhere in stock. It's a pretty wood frame with some little rustic elements to it and it sets off the
sepia print so beautifully. This is a very rustic look also. I had my roses framed in
it that we're doing here in this class with the
still lives and stuff. Now that we've got it
and I've looked at it, I was thinking on the
original that I had of this. I'd put it in a cheap frame so I have more than
one print of this, and I had printed it wrong
with the borders on it. It came out 11 by 17 and
so I got 11 by 17 frame. The way I framed it was with the flowers really
too far to the top almost. Then I realized, 11 by 17 isn't that same two-thirds
cropping as the 12 by 18. When it shrunk it
down to 11 by 17, it also cropped off part of my picture and I did not realize
it was going to do that. I felt like the
roses were trying to jump out of the
frame like they were too high up and so I was like, okay, I'm going to add some
more space to this print. I'm going to print it again
and then I'll take that to the custom framer with
the extra space up top. Now I realize that the way
I originally photographed it looked better than
the extra space up top. Now, I feel like there's
too much space up top and I'm very upset with myself for not realizing that on the one
where it cropped it, it cropped off some
of my original top up here and my original
way I had framed it out would have been great in this frame because none
of it would've been cropped and I would be an inch higher to the top and I wouldn't have
all this extra space here. What I have done, is
printed another print, and I'll take this back
up to the framer and say, can you please switch these out? Another thing about this that I have decided now that
I have looked at it. I might actually have this one. The rose is framed again
in a different frame. I have realized that
even though this is too white and I don't
really want the black, this photo almost needs that contrast separation
from the frame. I framed this without
a matte because I was thinking the frame
itself was wide enough. But I think because
this center part is brown and then it goes into a gray when it's
hanging on the wall. You really can't see enough definition coming
from the print to the frame. It doesn't look like there's enough contrast
there in color and almost think it needs to be matted and maybe a
different frame. Something else in this frame. I also printed another print to swap out and maybe the
rose is to reframe. Some of the framing in my mind is a little bit
frustrating and you can really tell too the difference that a cheap frame versus
an expensive frame, how that can elevate your work depending on what
you choose to put it in. I mean, those are some big differences
in the looks that you get with this being
the exact same photo. Keep in mind the size
that you're doing. Because if you're cropping off parts of your
photo that you didn't realize because say you
picked a size that wasn't standard and it's
cropping something you're not expecting, I want you to now
realize that it could be doing that and you might need to size that out in Photoshop
to the size that you're ordering so that you get
the exact crop you want, not the crop that might
come up because you picked a white frame on
something and it's shrunk it and cropped it
where it wanted to. Just things to think about. That being said price-wise, this frame was over $300 insane, which is why I'm now
determined to find a print that I'm actually
going to love in this frame. I feel like a lighter print because I've done dark
and moody photography now for the past year or so, but you know, some of my earlier
work was lighter things. I think a lighter print
would contrast nice with this dark edge and set off this very elegant rustic
look to this frame. That's some of the problem too. When you're spending
this much money on something and you get it and you think, oh, I think I love it, but I'm not sure and then you live with it for a couple
of days and you're like, okay, I'm not really loving it. I see now the issues. At least I can take this back and maybe put
something else in it. Or again, she's got a dust
frame on here, and look how nice accustomed frame
or does it they've got the dust frame matching the
color of the frame even. But I could cut this out. I can feel it right here,
the inside of the frame. I could cut that out and I
can put the print in myself. I could take the hardware off, I could put a new dust cover on. I could put the
hardware back on and I could re-frame it myself. It's not hard and
once you watch me do the two custom frame
videos after this, you're going to feel comfortable maybe doing that for yourself. Because if you've got
frames already at your house and you've
got a piece of art that you don't love, you could take that art
out and use that frame and also that leads me into
one other segment. Well, we'll just go ahead
and talk about it here. If you've got old antique
decorative frames and these are really easy to find at the antique market right now or at least everyone I go
to because for some reason empty decorative antique
frames are really popular and they're
not expensive at all. If I get something like this, which is what was priced
out originally for this rose photo in this size, which is what made
it so expensive because look how
elaborate that is. Well, I got this antique
market for 25 bucks. Now I'm thinking this is
an eight by ten probably, but I could do eight
by ten my own print and I could order the glass and the matting and stuff
from frame destination because they sell
parts and pieces in addition to whole frame kits. I could frame that myself. I also was talking to the custom framer and I can take that to
the custom framer and she can put
something in that frame for me and if the
frame is big enough, they can actually cut the
frame to whatever size that you need for an existing
print you're trying to frame. That's definitely some
good things to keep in mind to really cut
the price of custom framing down because most
of that price of $300 something is getting this wood that they then create
into the frame. That's a lot of that cost. The actual framing of it isn't that big of
a cost in there. It's the frame itself
that's so expensive, that trim and stuff. If you find some very
interesting frames at the antique market, I would grab them, put them in the closet until you find something that you
wanna do with them. If you take the
right photography, that would really benefit
from an antique frame, like some of my floral
work and stuff like that. Maybe beautiful and an
antique-type frame. Perfect, if you're going
to go have a solo show. I know of this artist in
Provence that I follow and she's doing a show and I believe the show is here in America
because she's an American. She's got antique
decorative frames like this that are from France. She has her work that is being mounted in those antique
frames and shipped back here for a show and those prints will be
sold in those frames. Definitely a nice option. If you do art shows
and stuff like that. Like you're out at
art fairs and things. This is a nice, inexpensive
way to really set your work off in a one-of-a-kind frame because nobody else is going
to have this frame. You might find
another gilt frame out there that's for sale, but it's not going to
be this exact one. They're all going
to be different. I have a whole wall
in my bedroom that I have covered in empty
decorative frames. Now, I'm going to
change that wall out to some Gallery framing. Now I'm looking at these
empty frames thinking, what can I put in there? Then that can be part of
the new gallery wall if I want to have one of those
hanging up there also. Another great option on getting
a less expensive frame, then you can get it the framer that gives you something
beautiful and unique. If you're doing
gallery shows though, where they want the black frame or white frame with
a white matte, then you wouldn't
be able to do this, but this definitely would
be very special if you can. All right, so I hope
you enjoyed looking at all of these yummy
options for framing. From the very cheap to the very expensive and how the framing really can elevate your work depending on what you
choose to put it in. All right, so I hope
you enjoyed this and I will see you in class.
7. Custom Home Framing - No Mat: In this video, we're
going to custom frame one of our prints. I have ordered two custom frames and I'm going to show
you how to do each one. This is the first one. I have gotten these from
Frame Destinations, which I love Frame Destinations. These frames took about
a week and a half, not quite two weeks to get. I ordered these at the same time that I ordered all my prints, and so that's pretty
the same timeframe. Give yourself two weeks for that because what they do is it's an it's an online
custom framer for you, and they send you
everything you need to then frame your print at prices that are significantly cheaper than going
to a custom framer. Just to give you an
example of pricing, the custom framer
that I have gone to the same little
bit bigger print. But this right here, I want to say it was
$40 or so to get this. It's 8 by 12. No mat, comes with
a piece of glass, comes with a piece of foam
core in here for my backer, and it came all put
together and it came with my mounting hardware. The only thing I didn't
come with was the picture. What I like about using
Frame Destinations is they have a fairly nice
quantity of frames. Here's another frame that I got. It was quite a bit
bigger, 16 by 22, which will frame my 12 by 18 print that we're
going to frame in that. I got one without a mat and
one with a mat so that you would know how to handle
each of those situations. My girlfriend that
shows in a gallery, she does frame destinations
for all her gallery prints. For a gallery, you have
to have gallery framing. It would need to be
white or black with a white mat and your
picture framed in that. You can't normally do a gallery or a photo show with
a pretty gold frame. [LAUGHTER] But I'm
doing this to show you all how to custom
frame at home, and then I will give
this to my neighbor who gave me these peonies
to photograph because I thought that
was really generous of her to let me cut all her
peonies to photograph. I'm going to give her a
print in a beautiful frame, and this one really didn't cost about as much as going to Micheal's and
buying a frame really. But the nice thing was I
got to pick the frame. I got to choose the size. It could be any size I wanted, it didn't have to be a
standard eight by 12 size. What this company does is
they will make your frame, cut your mat, everything to
you in exact custom sizes, just like you went
to a custom framer. They sell all the parts
and pieces to framing, or they'll send you a
whole frame assembled, ready to go like
I have got here. I ordered the frame kit. I pick the frame, I told them mat or no mat, I told them yes,
I want a backing. One of the things
that you have to specify with something
like this with no mat is, I want spacers because
the mat is the spacer. You don't want that photo
print directly on the glass, so you would get
some spacers from Frame Destinations also and I'll show you how to use those. I liked that they have
all the parts and pieces. They do have some training
and education on their site on how to use their products and do some framing yourself. All of that. Once I show
you how easy this is to do, I think you're going to
really love doing some of your own custom
framing and then you won't be limited by
standard sizing. This came just like this. It was wrapped up in plastic like the other one
I just showed you. We're just going to take these
metal pieces and bend them up and pull the backing out. When you're ordering, you
need to specify if you want the backing and the mat that
you order to be archival. I didn't order these archival, I don't think because the very
first time I was on there, I was getting used to their setup and their
format and their options, and then after talking
to my gallery friends, she's like the archival
part of her framing sometimes is the
most expensive part of that process because if your backer board is archival and acid free and your mat
is archival and acid free. Those just costs more than
the regular ones that you can get when you're on this
site making your options, ordering a whole
custom frame kit. Just know that if you're going
to want it to be archival, if it's going in a gallery
to sell and they want archival prints and
archival surroundings like the back and
the front then order archival backer and archival
mat when you're ordering. I'm just going to
pull the glass out. You also have different
options for glass. This is acrylic that
I have ordered. It's not glass. If you're sending things
to art shows or galleries, most times they require
that you not use glass because they don't want to be responsible
for breaking it. If you have to ship it to a
gallery in another state, they don't want to have that
glass break in shipping, and so the acrylic is a
really beautiful surface. It looks like glass, but it just isn't
going to break. Because this is no mat in here, I'm not
going to put a mat, and then I wanted it
to look more like the old paintings that were
completely framed out. I got this without a mat, which now that I'm
thinking about it, when I said old paintings, I do have another example [LAUGHTER] to talk about in
this little framing section. If you don't want to
order a custom frame, but you want to have
some beautiful ornate, something that didn't
cost very much. I have old frames like
this that I got at the antique store
and I've averaged to pay 20 or $30 for these, and I have some really
big ones that I might have paid $50 for. But if you go to the frame store and you
get this priced out, and this is actually two
frames in here together. I don't know if you can
see that I'm moving that. But this is a frame
and this is an adder. Something like this
might cost you $600 for a small really
ornate frame like this. I paid 25 bucks. If you didn't know it, custom framers will
put photos and frame things in your own frame. If you don't want to
buy a frame from them, or you could get the insert pieces for this
from Frame Destinations, and you could frame it
yourself at home with a beautiful antique frame you
got pretty cheap somewhere. I look around for those
at the antique store. They're pretty readily
available because lots of people like
to collect those. and you get a really
nice expensive frame without spending the money. [LAUGHTER] The very first thing that we're going to have to do, and if you're touching
this with your fingers, you're going to have
to clean this glass. Try to touch it as few
times as possible so that you don't have fingerprints all over your glass, if you can. We're going to pull
the wrapper off because what I'm
going to have to do here is [NOISE] trying to
stop touching all over. What I'm going to
have to do is put spacers on here because we don't want to put this
print, when we frame it. We don't want that print
to be touching the glass. Because over time and it's possible that there's
some moisture in the air, that print will stick to
that glass and it's going to ruin things so we don't want to stick the print to the glass. What we want to do, because
if we were doing a matte, the matte would separate
it from the glass for us. But because I'm
not using a matte on this because I want it to
look like an old painting, we're going to have to
use photos spacers. This is just an eighth inch bar that's got one side
sticky on it that we're going to mount
onto our frame on each side and then you're not going to see
them because they're clear. The lip of the frame right here, we'll cover that up
so we won't see it. When you're ordering
from frame destinations, you want to order this at the same time that you
order your print because it's $6.98 for the spacers and you can't find them
anywhere in stock. They don't sell these
spacers anywhere. I did not order at the time
that I ordered the frame because I just didn't realize that it
didn't come with it. So now I'm telling you
it doesn't come with it. [LAUGHTER] I actually went up to the Micheal's
and said, "Hades, cell photography frame
spacers so that I could film this segment and
show you the correct pieces." They're like, "No,
we don't sell that." Basically, nobody
sells this just where you can go
buy a bar of it. And then I priced it online
because they use Arlo framing spacers and
it's like 35 bucks. [LAUGHTER] It's expensive. If you just order this with your frame kit at the
time that you order it, it's like seven bucks so
the lady at Micheal's had, like she just took sympathy
on me and she gave me one of these because I told her I was in a bind and I was
trying to frame something. She said, "Here, you
can just have this." I thought that was super
generous of her to do that. But because I got the long bar here instead of cut pieces, it's very easy to cut. We're going to stick
this to the glass rather than the wood. Because on the wood it could
separate and then it could come out into your photo like something bows or
something like that. If we stick it to the glass, we get a much cleaner adhesion and this frame covers it
so we won't even see it. So you want to do your two long sides first
and then come back and cut your two short sides
and this stuff is just super easy to cut. Because I've already
measured out, I'm going to cut it
here with a pair of heavy scissors and you saw
how easy that was to cut. Then if I don't have it
the exact right size, like it is a tiny bit long, I can just go back and cut
another tiny piece off of it. So now I have four sides
and then all we have to do is peel this backing off because this
odd will be sticky. I want to get it as close to the edge and as perfectly
straight as possible. I don't want any overhang. I don't want it to this
actually has overhang, so that's not good. I must have cut it a
tiny bit too long. So let me trim this one first. [NOISE] There we go. Then before this one
is permanently stuck, I'm going to trim
this edge also. [NOISE] There we go. Those were that just flew too. [LAUGHTER] Easy enough to fix and then we're just going to press that down and
that's now permanent. So let's go ahead and
stick all four sides. I mean, this right
here might be the most complicated part
of this frame it's just these little things right here because
you're just going to love how easy in
the end this is. There's that one. Then if you get any fingerprints or
anything on your acrylic, you're going to need
to clean that with some glass cleaner
before you frame up your print because you don't
want any fingerprints or anything inside that frame. I'm just trying to- there we go. You don't want it to overhang on this side or
this side either, you want it to be
right on that edge because if you make it
bigger than the glass, it won't fit back in the frame. [LAUGHTER] Just be as
careful as you can. You see how I did that if
it snapped down on me, I just had to very
gently pull it back up before I press it
down and it's permanent. All right. So there's that. I do have a couple of fingerprints inside
so what would be really nice is if you had a photography cloth or
a cloth with the lint, which I have all of those I think downstairs so
I'm just going to use a hopefully lint free cloth
here and in the light, I'm going to get rid
of any prints that I might have put on the
inside of this glass. Which is why I haven't taken the acrylic stuff off the backside of this
glass. There we go. Now I'm going to take the
acrylic stuff off of this side and do my best not
to touch the glass. Let's see where I can get an
edge up here. There we go. And rather than touch the glass, I'm going to hold it with
my little paper towel here. Because [NOISE] the thing
we cannot touch the better. Now we have our peace with
our clear things in it, our spacers and we're ready
to set this glass in place. Then you'll notice
all the spacers, our behind, our framing set so you should not
be able to see them. Now what they recommend is if you're framing a black frame, use black spacers and any other color frame
use clear spacers, so I have used clear spacers. Now because this
is a thick paper. I'm actually going to set the paper in here and
put my backer board on top of that and I feel pretty comfortable that
that's going to stay that way without that
paper warping in. Go ahead and close down
our metal spikes here. [NOISE]. I would say on these spacers, get the smaller one. They come in, I don't know, eighth inch and quarter inch. I went with the eighth inch
and then look at that. Beautiful. Now we're finished framing that. One other thing
that we need to do is mount our mounting hardware. Now the reason they send you
the hardware not attached is because they want you
to be able to mount it this way if you need
to mount it this way, or this way if you've used a
picture that's up and down. They don't know how you're
going to hang this on the wall versus whatever photo
that you're going. If they mount it for me, then that's really not very helpful because then I can hang my picture going this way if
they did it the other way. What we're going to
do, I have the photo. It's going up that way. Basically we want to
take a pencil or a pen, and about a third
of the way down, we want to mark our frame. This frame is not
quite 12 inches tall. Let's say right about here, the four so inches would
be our mount area. You want it about a
third of the way down. If I was mounting it this way, I'd want it a third
of the way down. Then it comes with the
mounting hardware, which consists of our metal mounting pieces that are
going to hold our wire, two bumpers, because we're
mounting the wire here, we have bumpers down
here so that we protect the wall that
we're putting it on. We have two screws. Basically what I'm going to do is right where
I put that line, that's where I'm going to
mount these hanger pieces. We can do it right there if we want it
to be really a third. Line up the top of your metal piece with
the top of your line and then we're going to screw those in with a
little screwdriver. The screws are nice and short, but you do want these to be a little closer to the inside
rather than the outside. But we've got plenty
of room here. Frame is nice and thick. [NOISE] You just want
to screw these down. I did that slow so I didn't like run it
through too fast and crack the wood or anything.
There's that one. If they're not exactly
even it's not a big deal. [NOISE] There we go. See how easy that was. Because we're hanging
this with a wire so it can be adjusted in which direction they need to adjust it for it to be straight. This is our little piece of wire which I'm assuming they
send you something near the size you need so
that they're not wasting their their wire when you
order a frame this size, but I'm assuming they send
you something wide enough for the widest part of the frame
without too much extra. This stuff, you can buy this
at Home Depot or Lowe's. You can buy any of this
picture hanging hardware stuff anywhere that they sell
picture hanging stuff. I saw this stuff
at Micheal's too. Basically what you want to
do is go ahead and string up one side and you
want to pull it through where you have a
couple of inches over here. Then we're going to twist this
wire around our edge here. We're just going to twist it
and twist it and twist it. The more you do this, the nicer your twist looks. If it's the very first one
and it's messy, that's okay. Just practice and then just get it as nice as you
go and as you can. I don't do tons and
tons of framing, but I know just enough
to get in trouble there, [LAUGHTER] just enough
to be dangerous. You can cut this with
your heavy-duty scissors. That's about far enough. This probably will turn in. It's not a big deal with
these moved a little bit. That's not a big deal. They're secure and
fashioned enough. We're going to go ahead and
come on in this other side. [NOISE] You want to give yourself enough room so that this has a
little bit of leeway, not a lot, but you don't
want it super-duper tight and you just want
it to be right there. You don't have to
get exact with that. I'm just going to
cut this shorter. Sometimes I even say to the top, but really just about
right there is fine, just a little bit of lag. Then we're going to do the
exact same thing here and just twist our wire all around. If you have any custom
framing in your house, you can take it down and
take a look at it because one other thing
that custom framers do that you might
consider is they have some brown craft paper. I think I have some craft paper. There we go. You can see we can mount it right
there and we're done. The very last thing
you might consider is some brown craft paper, which I'm not finding, but basically it looks
like a grocery bag. It's that brown roll of
paper that you can get at the art store or from Amazon. I'll see where I've
hidden mine for myself. You might cover the
back with a dust layer. The reason why you do that, that back duster layer
is because as it is now, dust, and bugs, and moisture can get
into this frame. If you get something
from the custom framer, you'll notice they coat the back in that duster coat and
that prevents dust, and bugs, moisture, hopefully getting into
your frame because it covers all of these open areas. Definitely something
to think about. All you have to do
with that is just have some two-sided tape or some glue and you can just
tape or glue that down. That doesn't need
to be archival as much as everything
touching the photo. You just have to decide
there if you're giving this to somebody or
you're putting it in a gallery and they
need that dust cover, then you want to make it
with the brown craft paper. Basically cut it to size, a little bit smaller
than the frame. This is not the paper, but it looks like this. Basically, you would
glue that down then mount your hardware so
that your hardware, one sitting underneath
that paper, obviously, then you would
have a nice duster coating the whole backside. If you've got any custom
frames in your house, take a look at how they have finished that back
and you can see that duster piece
on the backside. This one I'm not going
to do that because I'm just giving it
to my neighbor. Hopefully, she'll like all
the effort I put into it. But if I were doing this for
something really serious, I probably would get
that brown craft paper, just run a layer of glue
around there and smooth it right out so that it had that
complete cover on there. Then the last thing
you want to do is take your photo dots here and mount those to the bottom so that that will
then not touch the wall. It'll hold it off the wall
just a tiny bit and prevent any damage to the
wall. There we go. Now we have a completely
finished custom frame photo for under $40. I really think this
was $40 or so. It wasn't very much. You
can see how easy that is. Then if I ordered the
parts and pieces, I could have framed it in an antique frame that I
found at the antique store. That would have been
really cool too because you can just order
the parts and pieces from the frame destinations. I hope you liked
how easy that was. I know it took a little time
to talk through all of that, but really you can
frame these in 15-20 minutes and look
how beautiful they are. I'm going to frame the
other one for you also. I will see you back in class. [MUSIC]
8. Custom Home Framing with mat: In this video, I'm going
to show you how to custom frame a print with a mat because it's completely
different than how we framed our picture
without a mat. I've got a 12 by
18 print here that I'm using for this project, and I have ordered
my custom frame kit from Frame Destinations. I picked a really pretty
brown framing to set off the colors here in the
table behind my roses. I thought that would be pretty. This is a 12 by 18 print. It isn't much larger than the
other one that we framed, and this ran about
$125 for the frame, the glass, the mat,
and the backing. I did not pick the archival options just because this is the first time
I was ordering from them. If you pick the archival options like the archival mat
and archival back, it will probably cost a
little more than $125, but that's still easily
more than a third or more the cost of a real custom frame from
the custom framers. Because I'm getting
one custom frame to the custom framer,
one this size, and they priced me out a frame that was very similar in size to my antique frame
and it was $900. Guys, I'm not even
kidding you there, I had a heart attack
when she told me the price because this is not even a great big picture. I mean, give me a break. When she told me that, I'm like, we got to go back
and look again, and I picked a different
frame for that picture, and I still spent $350, which, let me tell you, if
I wasn't filming this class for you and showing you some different interesting
things to talk about, I'm not sure I would ever
spend that much on framing, which I actually have an aunt
that is a custom framer, but she lives 400 miles away. I'm sure I could have got
something custom framed for the family discount
if I had wanted to drive up there and wait a couple of weeks for
her to get the matting and everything in possibly.
But oh my goodness. The custom framer
turnaround time is about two weeks or
longer usually. Unless they've got
something in stock, they have to order
that stuff in, too. You can see that by framing
something yourself, you spend a good 30 percent of whatever a custom frame
might be or even less, if you're picking something
expensive like I did. Because, of course, I
can't pick a cheap frame. I have to pick a $900 frame. I mean, that's like
a mortgage payment. I mean, do people
really spend this? I mean, I guess they
do, but I was really surprised at that pricing on
the framing that I picked. My mom has tons of things custom framed because my aunt
is a custom framer. So when she was alive and
had a lot of things done, she could just run over
there and get it for cost. If you know a
custom framer, yay. Family discount for you, maybe. If you don't, this is so much
more economical and nicer than getting frames from
Target or Michaels, which I have plenty
of those, too. But what's nice about this is if you don't
have a standard size, you can get a frame in
a non-standard size. The only drawback really that I see from
doing it yourself with something like this
is you don't have as many options as I had
at the custom framer. At the custom framer, she had 1,000 different trimmed pieces that
can be used as frames, whereas Frame Destinations has probably 200
different options. So you're more limited in things that you
custom frame yourself, but for the cost, do you care? I'm going to show you how we're going
to custom frame this, and this is exactly how
I got it in the mail. I was super impressed
with how it was packaged. On the back side, it comes with the hardware. You'll notice that
it's basically the same setup as we did
on the smaller frame. My gallery friend did
say on gigantic prints because she does some
that are like 30 by 40. She said, even though these are super nice and she
loves the quality, when you get to the
really big sizes, it doesn't feel as sturdy
as she would want it. So they're really super sturdy for even
up to this size. This was 12 by 18,
16 by 22 frame. But if you're getting
super gigantic, their frames are like
one or two inches. They're not gigantic
gigantic, and she did wish that for the big stuff
they felt sturdier. I don't know if you've
ever got something square out of a frame
like this before. But if you take
this 1.5 or so inch frame and you make it gigantic,
it might twerk on you. I completely understood what she was saying when she
mentioned that, so just keep that in mind. If you're doing really
gigantic stuff, you have to be a
little more careful. So it comes with the
mounting hardware. Came with a little business
card, and it does give you some instructions
like I'm showing you here for mounting and
installing stuff. Just a little how-to
as a refresher, even though I'm going
over everything for you. We've got our little
backer piece right here and we have our mat. I'll put this backup
piece right here, and you want to be
real careful with the mat because you can
see this is the white mat. I don't want to be doing
this with dirty fingers, so wash your hands
before you start. Then we've got our
piece of glass in here, and our piece of glass does
have the coating on it. So we'll have to take that off. But I'm going to wait just
a moment before I do that. I'm going to show you how
to mount your print in your piece of mat board because it's really nice
if you could do this as archively as possible. So used to I would put
my print on something. If I was getting like a cheap
print from, say, Target, I might do something like
that and put a piece of masking tape on the top of the
bottom, and that'll be it. It would be in its little frame and done with the masking tape, which is not archival. I basically said, there
you go, I'm done. So you don't want to do that with really nice art prints that you're printing the frame. Basically, what we want
to do is we want to have some acid-free
linen-hinging tape, and we're going to hinge this onto our backer board and mat where it will be archival
and do no damage. First of all, I'm going to hinge my mat to my backer board. Basically, we want to do this on a flat
surface and ideally, you want them to be level, so they're not level currently. What would be good is if I had a piece of cardboard, which I have right here, that I could slip
right under here. This is just a piece of
cardboard from a packing box. If I could slip that under
there and then we'll see, are we level now? Because I want this to be level and my table is
a little bit wonky, so I've got it as close
as I can and I'm using the acid-free
archival linen tape, and I basically want a piece of this tape cut to the
length of my thing here. We're going to hinge our piece. You want just slightly shorter. You don't want it to be longer, so we want it slightly shorter. There's that. Then this has a coating on it, so this is pretty sticky. So I'm going to peel off the top coating and the
bottom side is sticky. This is the sticky part. You can also get this stuff in where you wet it
to make it sticky, and I want to make sure
it's perfectly even there. Hang on here. This is why if you can
get it perfectly level, that would be perfect. There we go. Once you
get that on there, then you can just take a brayer, you can take a spoon, you can take your finger,
and I'm just making sure that I press these down and
really burnish it into that. Anything that you have
that you can burnish with, go ahead and burnish that down. Now we have hinged our
mat to our backing. Make sure when you do that, you don't hinge the mat
down the wrong way. You want the beveled
part to be sticking up. Very important because
usually when I do stuff, I do the first one wrong and then I get
everything backwards, and I just want to
point that out to you. Then what we're
going to do is now we can slip our
picture in here and get it lined up exactly
how we want it, preferably where there is nothing sticking out
where it shouldn't be. Because this print fits so
tight really into this, I just want to make sure
everything is under there. I think that's exactly
where we want it. If you have something soft
that you could set on here, you could set it on there to
make sure it doesn't move\, see if I have something soft, something with felt on it, some little picture
pillows would be nice, but I don't have those because I don't frame enough to do that. You could just be real careful, which I feel like maybe
I'm not super careful. So here's what I'm going to do. I've got a heavy metal thing that I'm just going to wrap
up in a piece of linen, so I'm actually using
a heavy flower frog. I'm just going to be real
careful and wrap that in a piece of linen so that it
will hold my piece down. I don't want to scratch this
piece while I'm doing it. Now we're going to
do what's called a hinge mount up here. We're going to hinge this
print to this backer board, and then we can
fold our mat down, and this is the correct archival
way to mount that print. You want to cut your tape here, let it come down
about an inch or so. You want it to come up
about an inch or so. Well, that's probably
an inch and a half. Let's see how big that is. I'm going to be mounting
it about half and half. So that's two inches. I've got two inches and
I'm going to mount about an inch and under here
and an inch above. I want at least two of those. What I'm going to do is I'm going to peel the
paper off of the linen. This is why you want something
to hold your print down. Actually, the print
looks a little crooked now that I
can see it here. It's not even right there. So let me just
double-check before I mount this down completely. There we go. Because
this has lines on it. So if the lines are crooked
and I put that mat down, then we're going to see that the lines were crooked on there. I'm going to peel the tape
off this backer again. This is the sticky. I want the sticky
side up and I'm going to very gently
without moving the print, which I just moved it. Let me double-check. You just want to be as
careful as you can here. Now let's try to move
it without doing that. Preferably without touching it a lot with our fingers also. I've just got it about
an inch under it, and the sticky side
you can see is up. I'm going to do that
right here also. You can see how if you've
got archival tape, and you've got archival backing, and you've got archival mat, how nice this is going
to be for 200 years. Then we're going to
take another piece slightly longer than
that, so we'll say maybe two-and-a-half
to three inches. This is three inches, so
we'll say three inches. Don't have to be exact,
it just needs to really cover what we've already done. I want to make sure that
I really stuck that on that tape and I will, probably with a tissue, do that a little bit
harder because I don't want to get
anything on the picture. I don't want to smear a
bunch of my finger greases, finger oils onto your print. Those will eventually show up, so be very careful
touching the print. I'll have a little pair of
white gloves somewhere, but I cannot find them. I hide things from myself. Here we go. Now we're going to stick this down as close to the print as we can without sticking
it on the print. Then there we go, adhere
here that really nicely. Actually, if I take
this right here, that's the perfect thing
to press down on the print itself to make sure it is really stuck on the
back of the print, which I didn't do a second ago. So really makes sure
that stuck on the back. Then we'll do the
same thing over here, make our little t. Getting this little piece
of paper stuck from its backing is the hardest part. Here we go. It's sticky side to sticky side. So we want that to
be sticky side up and then this sticky side down, and then we furnish that down. You can burnish that
down just like I am on this piece of paper
or you could have, if you have one of
those bone burnisher, that's a good thing
to burnish with. You just want to make sure
it's stuck really good. Then move down your weight
and close your mat. Now you have an
archively matted photo. You haven't stuck it on the
back with masking tape, you haven't stuck
it to the backing with some tape that's going to age and change your
photo at any point. So we are now ready
for our frame. I did find my craft paper. I don't have enough, but
this is craft paper. It's like brown paper bag. This is basically which
you could use to make a dusk cover out of, so I'll
show you that in a second. First, we have to get the
plasticky stuff off of our frame and I'm
just going to use this cloth to hold it with
rather than my fingers. You can see if you
had a little pair of those white photo gloves, things that you see museum
people use and stuff, if you had something
on your hands, you could be touching this glass without leaving fingerprints. I've got that plastic
off of the front, and I'm going to place that down and I got to pull the
plastic off of the back. I'm doing my very best not to
touch this glass anywhere. If you're super
careful and you don't touch anywhere on the
front or the back, then you will have
a piece of this. There's a piece of fus
that just stuck to this. If you're very careful, then you won't have as much to clean off before
you get it all framed. Once you get it in before you
have anything stuck to it, you want to make
sure there's nothing weird sticking on the back
or a fingerprint anywhere. Dust-free cloth is a good
thing to do that with. I do have a couple of things
sticking on the front, but it's like those dust pieces. Now we've got our glass ready. We're going to just
turn our print upside down and place that
in and we can check it. Look how beautiful that is. You can see my ring
right there. Perfect. Now we're ready to just
fold our metal pieces down. Look how easy that is. It's at this point right here that you would put
your dust cover on. If you have some brown
craft paper and you'd basically run on edge
glue all the way round and then run your
paper right here to within the outside edge, I'd say come in maybe
a quarter of an inch. But that will be covering
the whole thing with about a quarter of an inch
of the frame that's showing, and then we can mount
our hardware after that. I say do it all
the way out there. Custom framers may tell
you something different. That's my own preference. Maybe they're doing a quarter
of inch inside the frame and the mounting hardware is
outside the duster cover. That's totally another way that you could consider
doing that, too. Because this print
is going this way, I want to make sure
and this is the top. What I want to do is come
within about a third, just like we did on the other
to mount this hardware. This is 24 and 1/2 inches. If we did this at
about eight inches, we would be at about
1/3 of the way down. Let me just grab my pen and
we'll mark eight inches, and that's where my
hardware is going to go. I'm just lining the top, the middle of my piece here with that line so that when
I do both of them, they're both the
right same height and these do have a
front and a back. The back is smooth and the
front has some printing on it. You can tell the front
from the back pretty easy. Then I'm just going
to drill that in. I'm about a quarter of an inch there from the inside.
You want to be far enough over that
you're not going to crack your frame. That one. Let's get this one. Is that where my one? Yeah,
that's where my one is. There we go, and then
we've got our wire. Just like with the other, I'm going to just
thread it right into this hook and I'm going to then give myself
a couple of inches here. I'm just going to now wind that loose one around
this other one. You just want a wind
that enough where you're sure it's going to stay. So you want a couple of inches. Then sometimes what you can do too is you can
actually then come back up the other way on it
until you get to the end. If you look at framers, there's this nice
and neat and even. Mine's not as nice
and neat and even because I don't do
this all the time. But if you practice and do it a little bit and you look at the back of one of
your custom frames, you can see what it
is they've done. Again, I want to
do this where it comes up just a little bit, give a little bit space so
that when we go to hang it, we're not making it so hard for the hanger to
catch the wire. I'm going to cut that
a little shorter. It looks like they
have enough wire there for you to do
this at least twice. If you do the first
one, you mess it up, I think I have enough
wire to do that again. But if I went the other
way, I probably wouldn't. They give you enough
wire to go either way. Again, I'm just going to
twist this around here. You want to have a
couple of inches because you just
want to make sure no matter what that
doesn't let loose. I've got plenty there to hang, and then I also have my bumpers which I will put down
here at the bottom within about a quarter
of an inch there on that last little staple. There we go. We have now
completely custom framed our print and then we
might take a cloth on the top just to
make sure there's no fingerprints or weird dust. There we go. We have
now custom framed, archively mounting our
print in our frame. Now that it's framed, I'm thrilled with
the frame I picked because I framed one of these in a cheap one with the
black and the white, and I didn't like it
with this rose set because it just didn't
look appropriate to the photo I stuck in it. Now I know with this
other rose thing, if I frame that first
rose one in this frame, I'm probably going
to love it because look how beautiful
that turned out. I hope you love how
easy that was to custom frame using one of the Frame Destination's
frame kits. Now we've looked at one with
a mat and one without a mat. I hope I've made that
really easy so that you'll give some of
these a go for yourself. I'll see you back in class.
DENISE LOVE, Artist & Photographer
