The Big Picture

One of the areas I am intrigued by is creating big pictures.  I have been listening to Gavin Siem’s podcasts over on ProPhoto Show and he has been very excited about creating large prints.  Large prints give the impression as being a large painting and make the print a center piece of your room or home.  I wanted to create a large print of my two sons over our fireplace.  About four years ago, I had created a 30x40 inch B&W print for that space.  Instead of having it framed professional, I hand built my own frame.  The frame was not hard to build.  I used some molding from the local hardware store as the frame.  The problem I had when I built the frame was I couldn’t find a mat board large enough for the picture.  I ended using two pieces of mat board and splicing them together.  Once I completed the project, you really couldn’t see the two mat boards unless you got really close.  Print also looked really good even though it was from a Canon 10D.

This time around, I wanted a more professional look that I could use to show to potential clients.  Again I select 30x40 as the print size and this time I used a color photo.  The problem now was to find a way to frame the print with mat border.  I looked around and couldn’t find anything until I looked  at pictureframes.com.  I found out that if you select a wooden frame, you can add a linen border or a liner as they call it to the frame in various widths and colors (black, white or natural).  Below is part of the ordering form that shows you the selection for the liner.



The liner is what gave me the mat like border I was looking for.  Pictureframes.com has a really nice ordering process for their frames.  You can even upload your picture to their site so you can how the picture and the frame look together.  The frame arrived in about five days packed very well and assembled.  Within a short period of time I had the picture framed and ready to hang.  I now looks great over my fireplace.

I learned one lesson from this process.  Normally when you order a precut mat board, you specify an opening slightly smaller (“1/4”) than the print so there is some overlap of the mat board.  For this order, I ordered the opening slightly smaller than my print.  Come to find out, with this type of frame/liner combination, you don’t need to do this.  The frame and the liner are put together as one piece.  The print, backer board and plexiglass sit within a rabbit that is cut into the linen liner.  The final opening is about a 1/4” smaller than than the opening you specify.  So I should have ordered the opening size as 30x40 inches.

The one drawback to this type of setup is that the plexiglass sits right on top of the print.  Normally with a mat board type of frame, the print is separated from the plexiglass by the mat board.  With have the print in direct contact with the plexiglass may affect the overall life of the print or it may create a moisture problem.  I’ll keep an eye on that and let you know if I see an problems.
I highly recommend Pictureframes.com.  I have used them in the past for other framing needs and those have always done an outstanding job.