Framing Demo: Works on Paper - After You Paint (19 of 27)

In this video, I'm going to walk you through framing a flat piece of art. In this case, a watercolor painting on paper. I'm framing it the typical way, but remember that there are many variants on this. We'll start by looking over the tools that I'll use for this part of the framing. First, I'm wearing gloves. Whenever possible, I wear them to protect the painting and the archival products from oils in your skin. Up here, you can see my rabbit foam. I could use sealant tape, but I opted for foam strip today to protect the mat from the frame. There's linen hinge tape. I also have double-sided tape. Scraps of foam board. Adhesives to hold the mat in place. A framing gun. It works a lot like a staple gun, but instead of staples, it uses what are called framing points. I have a dust brush. Scissors. And some paper weights, which you'll see what I use them for later. I also have dust cover paper, which will be part of the last construction step. As well as some form of paper trimmer. And a yardstick or a ruler. You can see the piece here that I plan to frame, and I have it set up just like it'll be layered. I'm going to use a strong one-inch wooden frame, and I'll go ahead and put that off to the side. Next I'll remove the mat. It's a big piece, so it can handle a mat with three-inch edges. And this mat is six-ply. Then there's the painting with a one-inch border to make it easier to frame. The last layer here is a piece of archival foam core. Under it all, you can see this rubber exercise mat that I mentioned earlier. I only use it for this purpose, so it's clean. It protects the materials and just makes framing easier. And then I have a piece of UV filtering acrylic. Now I normally prefer museum glass, but the show that this painting is headed to requires acrylic glazing. And this glazing has a protective cover on each side to keep dust off of it until you're ready to use it, and to prevent it from scratching. Now to frame the painting. I'll begin by applying the rabbit foam to the frame. You can see that I've already applied it all around the edge. In this case, it'll keep the glass or acrylic from scratching if there's any movement. I want the frame ready to go. Then I'll move that aside and work on attaching the mat to the foam board. The mat will swing like the hinge of a door, so that we can place the artwork between the two. To attach them, this is what I do. First, I make sure the painting will line up properly with the mat. Just make sure everything will work once it's all together. It looks like this will be fine, so we'll go ahead and put the painting on the side, and decide on which edge I want my hinge. I'm going to do it on the long side. It's a big piece, so I'd rather have the security of a long edge being taped. With the mat and the foam board aligned, I now open the hinge and rest the mat upside down on the table. Make sure the area is clean. You definitely don't want to get anything on your mat surface. Now you want these two edges to line up well, but the mat is thinner, so it kind of sinks down. To fix this, I usually place several pieces of scrap watercolor paper under the mat to lift it up. Raising it slightly allows for better tape adhesion, because the two surfaces are then even. Once they're even and lined up snugly, I take the linen hinge tape. It's the archival tape made from linen. I measure it to go almost the whole seam. I cut the tape. I take off the back, which reveals the sticky side. And then I apply it starting at one end of the seam. Notice that it's half on the back of the mat, and half on the front of the foam board. As I remove the backing and lay it on the surface, I gently secure the adhesion with my fingers. And I'll do this the whole way down the seam. Once applied, I can now close the hinge. When I do, I make sure to align the two layers again. And then, with my gloves on, I press down along the hinge edge to help secure the tape a little bit better. The next step is to place the painting in the center of the foam board and close the mat. The mat window should reveal the painting, as we checked earlier. For this piece, I'm allowing some of the painting border to show, so I have about a quarter inch of white surface all around my painting. In some cases, the mat will cover your painting image a little bit. At this point, it's important to make sure that the mat lines up evenly along the edges with the foam board. Everything needs to line up correctly. Take your time with this step, because it's really important that all the sides are even. You do little shimmies until you have it just right. And then, when I think everything's lined up, I like to place the scraps of foam core or mat board in the center of the painting image, and then I put paper weights on top. This gently and safely holds the painting in place. When I think I have it right, I check the measurements on all sides to make sure they're even. So I use these little paper scraps as a guide. It's good, so I'll add two more paper weights. And again, these foam board scraps are clean and archival, so I don't have to worry about the surface when I do this. Now I'm going to slowly and carefully turn the set so that I can open the hinge without it hanging off the edge. The paper weights are doing their job now. They're holding the painting in place. And now I'm going to use these archival clear adhesive corners to hold the painting in that exact spot. There are several products that you can use. I like this one because it works so well, and it's cut to allow less coverage of the painting. You'll see what I mean. You don't want the adhesive to show from underneath the mat when it hangs, so it definitely needs to be tucked under the mat edge. I'll remove the backing, very gently lift the painting corner, and then carefully apply the corner like this. When you put it down on the foam board, I just press down firmly but gently to secure the adhesive. You don't want to shift the painting at all, so be extremely gentle when you do this step. Now once you do this to all four corners, you can then remove the weights and the foam scraps. You can also close the mat hinge. The painting is now secure, so I'll gently brush it with a soft brush. I don't want any dust or dirt clinging to the glazing. And then we'll move the whole thing aside. Here's our frame again. If there are any visible glitches, not obvious ones, just minor ones, I usually place that edge at the bottom. I feel like it's a little less obvious when it's down there. Now I'll flip it over gently, and what we're going to do is place the glass in here, in this case acrylic. Acrylic has a static charge, so you have to be kind of careful with it. Also there's sometimes a side that's meant to go against the artwork. If it's not indicated, then you should be able to use either side. This one is the same on both sides, so we don't have to worry. What you do is slowly, carefully peel off the plastic protective cover, starting in one corner normally, and pulling diagonally. Now if your acrylic is marked specifically, then I would start with the side of the glass that faces out to the audience. You'll see. If it gets hard to pull the cover off, start from another corner until they meet. You just keep pulling at the different corners at a low level so that you don't encourage any kind of warping. Now acrylic scratches very easily, so we need to be delicate. I like this side to be my exterior, so I'll flip it over. The rubber surface protects it from scratching, and then I'll remove the plastic on this side as well. I purposely chose this side for the interior because it seemed like the plastic was removing a little easier. I had tested it, and it did. Now I'm going to lay my painting and matte set face down onto the interior side of the acrylic. It's a little awkward, but I flip it and place it on top. The matte set was clean, and the acrylic was just opened, so we have the best chance of not getting any dust particles in there. It's a real pain if you do. And then take the whole set and place it into your frame. Now we need to make sure that there isn't any dust or dirt before we close it all up, so I'm going to use my point gun. Shoot one point into opposite sides of the frame, just to secure it long enough for me to flip the whole set over and check the front. Everything looks good. Make sure your lighting is good, and check the whole piece. Sometimes the dust is on the exterior, so be aware of that. I think it looks good, so I'm going to flip it back over, and I'll shoot points all around the back of the piece, just enough to make it secure. Be careful with the point gun, by the way. Don't place your hand in the path of the point. Then, once I have a few points around the edge, I'll flip it over again to double check for dirt. If you do see dirt, you're going to have to open it up and try to get it out. Sometimes I'll dust off the front, just to make sure that I'm seeing accurately. And if you do this, always use a microfiber cloth so it doesn't scratch. Everything looks good, so I'm going to lay it down again and add a few more points. I like to space them about every five to six inches or so. If it happens to kick up little particles from the frame, just wipe them off. Now our next step is to apply the dust cover. This gray paper is much larger, it's more than big enough. In order to adhere the paper to the back, I need to apply double-sided tape all around the frame. And I attach it about a quarter of the way from the edge. I want to get close to the edge, but not so close that any of it would show from the front or side of the frame. After you apply the tape, some people lay the paper on the table, and then they place the painting on top. Personally, I like to place the roll at one end, and then push the paper onto the tape from the center out. And look, my paper is helping me. It unrolled itself gently. So anyway, I'll go to the other side and gently pull to make it even. And then I'll push in the center to adhere the paper to the tape and kind of work my hand around there. Your goal and the key is to make sure that the paper is laying flat all around. After I make it once around and everything looks good and even, then I apply a lot more pressure all around the edges just to make it extra secure. Sometimes I press like this to add a crease so that when I cut the edges, I can see where to cut. You don't have to do this, but I find that it helps. It tells me where the edge of the frame is. Now to cut the excess paper off, you can either use a box cutter of some kind and a yardstick, or you can purchase a special dust cover trimmer. If using a yardstick, I have an old one that I use just in case it gets scratched up. It's not dirty, it's just one that can get a scratch and I wouldn't worry about it. I place the ruler edge about a quarter to a half inch from the frame edge, hold it securely with my free hand, and then I glide the blade down along the edge carefully. I'm pressing gently but firmly so I can cut without the yardstick moving. Ease the paper edge that was cut off. Sometimes you have to bend it a little to encourage the cut. Now this is how the trimmer works. You basically just run it along the edge and it should automatically create a quarter to half inch edge. Sometimes you have to clean up an edge that doesn't cut right, like this spot here. You just gently recut that spot and sometimes I'll use another tool, like this palette knife, to lift the remaining paper. The end result looks so nice and clean. It's a much better presentation than without the dust cover. And this paper is acid-free so it shouldn't need replacing for many, many years. We'll finish this up by adding the hanging hardware and identification. First, I want to make sure I know which side is the top of the painting. Even if you think you know, double check. So this is the bottom. I'll put the ruler here just to remind me. And I'm going to place the rubber bumpers on the bottom to identify it as well. They just peel off and then you apply them with a little bit of pressure. Now for the D-rings and wire. The D-rings are normally placed about a quarter or third of the way down from the top of the frame. For an average frame, it usually ends up being around 7 to 9 inches. Now this side is 28 inches long. So that would place the spot at about 7 to 9 inches, as I mentioned. I'll put it at 9. And I mark the spot with a small dot using either a pencil or pen. I place the dot in the center of the frame edge. OK, here is the wire and the D-rings that I plan to use. The single screw D-ring and 50 pound coated metal hanging wire is what I'm selecting. You'll need a screwdriver and wire cutters for the next step. This piece is not as heavy because it's using acrylic as opposed to glass. So I think I can get away with this one screw D-ring. It also sometimes depends on the frame. The D-rings get their name because the loop looks like a D, usually. Now if you look carefully, you can see there's an implied top and bottom of the ring. There's a flat side and a raised side. Can you see it here? If the raised side is face down, it doesn't lay well. So try to lay it down with the flat side down. You also want to make sure that the screw isn't too long. Then line up the opening for the screw in the D-ring with the dot that you made on your frame edge and secure the ring with the screw. You want to tighten it enough to be secure but not so much that it digs into the wood. After both rings are attached, I take my wire and stretch it through one of the loops with about 8 to 9 inches of extra length, as you see here. You need less for a smaller painting. Then I stretch the wire past the other ring and then another 8 to 9 inches beyond that. Like I did with the first side. Mark the spot with your hand and then cut the wire. Slip the wire through both D-rings like this. We're going to need some tension to do the following steps. So once you have the wires evenly distributed, you secure one side by slipping the wire through the ring a second time and then use that excess wire to loop around and around the main wire a few times. This will hold it securely in place while we work on the other side. On the other side, pull the wire nice and taut and then do the same thing on this side. Slip the wire through the D-ring a second time and then loop it around and around the main wire. This time, keep looping until it's all looped. Then go back to the first side and complete the looping. It looks nice and clean when it's done. Well, the piece is ready to hang now. But I like to add an information sticker to the upper right-hand corner on the back so the patrons have my contact information. And I'll write the painting title in the upper left-hand corner. Sometimes I print a sticker for this spot with the information requested by a show. So here we go. It's all done. It has a protective cover, bumpers to allow airflow and to protect the wall. You have the hanging wire and documentation. So this painting is ready to go. Once you have your paintings ready for hanging, if you want to display them on walls, you'll need some kind of hanging system. That is the topic of our next lecture.