Post #500 – Matting, Reframing & Weekend Review

I may have commented about this previously, but it has come to light again after a second colleague asked me two weeks ago where I purchased the “poster” (egads!) of the Painted Ladies hanging in my office. The Painted Ladies makes reference to the row of Victorian homes at Alamo Square in San Francisco, California. It was actually a photo that I had taken when I was in San Francisco in April of last year. When someone first thought it was a poster a few months ago, I thought I would add a personalized business card to the corner of the frame with reference to the title of the photo and my photo blog. Wasn’t exactly how I wanted to “adorn” the photo frame.

This second occurrence made me consider going with a larger frame but then also adding matting around the photo. I went to Michael’s Arts and Crafts and saw that they had pre-made matting for photos, but none as large as I wanted to go for my 16″ x 20″ photo, which was 20″ x 24″. But then I realized many stores were in short supply (no demand) of 20″ x 24″ frames. So I have gone with the 22″ x 28″ frame, which still does not look like overkill with “too much” matting. So I bought my own matting kit which allows me to cut the board at about a 45° angle to create the mat border. I created the mat for my photo of the Golden Gate, which I have here at home, and late last week I created the one for my Painted Ladies photo, which will be at the office.

 The photos are grouped with simulated mats and simulated frames to give you an idea of how they will look. I have the first thumbnail photo shown in the original frame without the matting. The original frames were also known more as poster frames with not much of a “reveal” to surround the photos.  The second photo is with the larger frame and additional matting.

There are actually two layers of matting that will be used, where the upper matting has a larger reveal of 1/4″ compared to the lower matting.

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Last Friday I had the privilege of meeting Peter from Tippin’ the Scales. He was in Chicago for the week checking out the sights and sounds of the city. We met late Friday morning after I finally plowed down enough pedestrians who thought they owned the streets. Luckily, there were no deaths. All I can say is I learned my lesson of not trying to use my GPS while driving in a downtown metropolis. That is unless you love hearing the word, “RECALCULATING” non-stop emitting from your GPS!! I think I nearly had the rest of my hair pulled out by the time I arrived to pick Peter up. I could have saved me a good 30 minutes had I just walked to meet him. Sorry Peter! But we quickly parked underground and checked out the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. A beautiful place which also had a great interior courtyard where we enjoyed lunch and were able to actually rest and talk. We then did a lot of walking near Millenium Park and Cloud Gate (aka The Bean) thanks to the great sunny weather we were experiencing. I hope to post photos of that day soon. Sunday was a great afternoon performance of the Great Lakes Navy Band at Cantigny Park in Winfield, Illinois. There were about ten of us who attended. “Irish Guy” was also there and was in quite a good mood. He’s also pressing me to go camping this month so that he can break in his new tent before the annual WSGA trip to Campit, near Saugatuck, Michigan in August.