How to Frame Artwork

Low cost home artwork tips and tutorials - How to Frame Artwork

Hi, I’m Sherry Tyra and I’d like to welcome you to my monkeysee.com video. Today, we’re talking about low cost art that looks great. In this section, we’re going to talk about cutting and measuring and placing your artwork within the frame. Now, one of the secrets of coming up with really creative artwork is thinking outside the box, looking for places to find artwork that you won’t necessarily think about. One of my best secrets is using wallpaper. And what I do is I go to my local paint and wall paper store and I tell them, “You know I’d like to get some books from you.” If you have any books that are out dated, that are past sale that you want to get rid off, let me know and I give them my phone number. Last time I did this, I ended up with 10 wallpaper books, but great stuff to choose from. They’re happy to get rid of them because they just room away anyway. This book here was a book on different Grasscloths. And as you can see, there are lots of different patterns and textures in this book. And I thought this was great so I actually put together a little montage of this different Grasscloth and you can see it right here on the wall. I set them in different colors and textures and put some horizontal, some vertical and I gave real interesting look in that frame. This actually is one of my favorite books that I’ve ever received. This is a Mere book and not only does it have great wallpaper in it, it also has wonderful borders and there are these little pictures that they have throughout showing what the wallpaper’s going to look like on the wall. So in these pictures are actually pretty standard sizes. They can fit in frames themselves. If you look, I’ve taken like this wallpaper right here and I’ve taken sections of it and printed in these frames here to give you this beautiful floral prints. These pictures here were actually border, sections of a border that I took and framed. And as you can see they are wonderful. They look like professionally printed prints and they framed up beautifully. And the nice thing about is the wallpaper gives this great texture almost looks like in needle point. Right now, I’d like to talk to you about how to determine what part of the inspiration piece that you’d like to frame. So I’ve started out with the Mere book that has these great borders in it and I love the sail boat border. So first of all, I’m going to cut the border out of the book using my straight edge. Again it’s sharp, be careful. Just cut it right down, pull it out at book, put the book aside. I have this great little piece here and so you take your matting from your frame and you just going to play with it. Figure out what section of this print that you like the most and that you want to highlight in your frame. So, let’s say I could view this big sail boat over here but I think I’m kind of cutting out some stuff over here. So if I move it over kind of take it in the light house here, it looks like I’ve got a great spot. So all I do is I kind of hold it there in place, grab a piece of tape, flip it over and stick some tape on it, just to kind of anchor it. Then you can kind of play with it, get it straight. And again flip it over, put a piece of tape, and then take your scissors and just trim away the excess. It’s just as easy as that, there’s absolutely no measuring involved. It’s just a matter of what looks good in the frame, okay? Take your frame, put your print and it’s held them place by the tape, just put it in the frame, figure out which is the top and which is the bottom because I always do that. Put the wrong end up. Stick your backing on, clip it into place just like that. And Walla! You have professional looking art to hang on your walls. Next, we’re going to talk about looking for other sources of inspiration.