 Hello, artists, subscribers to Monet Cafe on YouTube, my patrons on my Patreon page, and anywhere else I might share this video, I am bringing you this video. I'm artist Susan Jenkins, by the way, and I'm bringing you this video from an unusual place, my kitchen. Why am I doing that? Because my studio is covered up with stuff. I've been working on a lot of different things, and I needed the space. My studio is not very big anyway. But what I'm bringing you today is a highly requested video. I've been really listening to my patrons on my Patreon page. If you're not familiar with that, my page is patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins. It's a way you can support my channel and also get a little extra content and a little more communication. It's more of an intimate group. And my patrons actually have been the reason for a lot of my recent videos. I ask polls or get their suggestions. And this was so recommended. It was one of the most recommended videos I've had in a while, especially from my patrons, which is, you know, we make all this artwork and it's like, what are we going to do with it? We hope to sell it or display it or put it in a show. And I know I have shared in the past ways to put your artwork in these protective clear bags. You know, you can take it to little events you might have. It's a good way to ship it. But sometimes we want to actually frame our artwork. And that can get very expensive. I'm sure you're aware, even if you go to like Michael's or some of the framing stores and they have this little thing, they give like 40% off and it's still expensive. So I've come up with over the years ways that I can do some of the framing myself and save some money. So that's what this video is about. I think you're going to have some great information, some money saving tips, and hopefully get some of your beautiful pieces of art framed, ready to display or to sell. All right, let's do this thing. All right. First, I thought I would show you what does a professionally framed piece of artwork look like? I actually had this piece framed. I haven't sold this because I like it hanging on my wall. So this is a frame that I actually purchased. It was a standard size frame. What is the size? Like 16 by 20. I like to work in standard sizes when I can because you can find frames that you can finish the framing process yourself. So what does it look like? It's got this, it's called a dust cover on the back and that's what this paper is that's on the back of the frame to kind of cover up everything that's going on behind here. And I'll show you what's going on behind here in a minute. And then they do a really nice professional job of putting the wire here. And they actually include, I love this idea, they include, if you sell this to a client, they include the hardware to actually hang it. That's a nice little touch, right? Then also too, they have these nice little plastic stoppers on the bottoms of it to kind of hold it away from the wall. All right, just and they just have that on the bottoms. All right, so now I'm going to show you what's going on behind here, what tools you need to make your frames look professional like this, and get your artwork ready to go. Okay, here we go. All right, I'm going to get started here showing you my basket of framing goodies. I've got a basket. When you have a small studio like I do, you learn a lot of creative storage options. And because I don't do this process a lot of framing or finishing the framing of some of my pieces, I need a place to, you know, not have this in the way. So I have a shelf that's up high that I keep all of my framing goodies. All right, time to see what's in my handy dandy framing basket. The first item is the dual driver point driver. It's made by Logan. It comes with the way to load the points right here. You basically just pull this back. You load more of the points and you close it up. Okay, so and this one is about $65 and it comes with 600 points. You have to buy extra, you know, when you're running out. Okay, so it's really, really easy to use. All right, the next item is this tape gun. I couldn't remember the manufacturer for this tape gun. It's called an ATG gun, an adhesive tape gun, but Scotch, the company Scotch makes one of these and different companies. I found them on Amazon. They range anywhere from $25 to $50. I think more towards the $50 range. And they have different thicknesses of tape. I can't remember which this one was. And it wouldn't say on here, right? It looks like maybe about a half an inch of tape. Okay. So and I keep my instructions in here on how to load it. It's just a good idea. I found it online how to load the tape dispenser. There's plenty of videos that'll show you how to load one of these tape guns. Okay, they're all kind of similar. All right, so there's the next thing in there. And then the next thing, oh, and you can buy these, I think they come like six rolls for around $20. The next thing I have is the dust cover trimmer, the little trimmer that trims the paper off the edges. This one, I couldn't find the name brand. I think the guy who helped me frame it maybe gave it to me, but they have one also made by the Logan company called the Logan dust cover trimmer. It's around $15. Okay. And of course you will need some of the brown paper. Okay. And I think, yes, they are about $12. It's called dust cover paper. They're about $12 for 30 feet of 30 inches. That's the general idea of the price. So again, this is not, of course also too, you will need some of the wire for putting the wire on the backs of them. You will need some of the picture hanger hardware. And they come, I get things on clearance sometimes. Different sizes obviously are for different weights of how heavy your painting is. Also they have different gauges of wire if it's a bigger painting. So that's kind of a common sense thing as to how much, how thick or how heavy duty the hardware is for that. So that's pretty much the rest of the things that are in my basket here. Okay. So let's take a look at how we're going to approach this. This would be in the example is if you just bought a frame that had glass in it. Okay. Both of these ignore the fact that I already have these little things that are called points in here. Normally they would not be in here. Okay. But in this glass is very dirty. All right. So I'm just doing this for demonstration purposes. Now there are two ways that you can do a pastel painting. Well, there's probably more, but the two ways, standard ways are to have a mat with your painting of whatever color, you know, or to frame your piece not matted. Okay. And I prefer not to have a mat. Now this painting does not fit in here. I mean it fits, but there's space around it. I wish this frame was the right size for this painting, but there's space on either side. So in a perfect world, I would always paint in standard sizes. Okay. Five by seven, six by eight, eight by 10, 11 by 14. And there's the next one, 16 by 20, I think. And I know there's like all the different A4 and all those sizes too. But that way you can find standard size frames to fit your artwork. Sometimes I don't paint in standard sizes. Now that's the reason why a lot of these frames I'm showing you now are not standard sizes. I'll try to give you a quick story as to why. Back many years ago when I had started really painting and getting better, I had a whole lot of artwork and I had someone invite me to do a show. So I knew I couldn't afford to have all these pieces framed. So I found a guy who was really good at making frames and putting the frames together was actually very good at picking a frame. He had a lot of varieties of wood and choices at picking a frame per each piece of my artwork that went well with my artwork. I think it's really neat to find a frame that looks good with your artwork instead of just doing like all black frames, all white frames. But my paintings were not standard sizes. So this is the end result of a lot of paintings that I have sold without the frame. So I've ended up with a lot of these non-standard size frames here. So anyway I recommend if you can work in standard sizes this is best to get a standard size frame instead of having to get a frame or to make it. Then you're you know spending more money again. So anyway I wish this fit in this because I love the look of not having. Now this is very glared right now because I still have the plastic bag behind this so you can't really see the artwork that well. Normally you wouldn't. But I like it without a matte. I think you experience the beauty of the painting more without a matte obstructing your view. Now I know there's different opinions on that and reasoning for that and that's all it's fine whatever your feeling is but I prefer that. Now it is advised there's different trains of thoughts with this too. It's advised not to put your pastel work right against the glass. So some artists say it's fine you can do that. But it's best I think to use something called spacers. Now unfortunately I don't have any with me here but I'll show you a picture in this video of what a spacer is. Do you see how the frame has a little lip right there? That is where a little very thin it's like made out of plastic little spacer you can buy them at framing stores in strips and you can cut them and you literally just cut the spacers they have a little adhesive on one side to fit the spacers right in this little groove area. You're good too. So when you get that little spacer in there around there and you put your artwork down it's not touching the glass it's touching the spacer. Again you'll have a board backing that will fit the actual frame. So that's the way I prefer my in a perfect world scenario is without a mat but because I had been working with all these non-standard size frames that I have I might as well repurpose them right? I thought well let me go ahead for this demonstration and for this painting and go ahead and show you what this painting would how it would work in this particular matted frame because it won't fit obviously if I take this mat out this painting will have glass all around it you know exposed glass. So I've got to figure out how am I going to crop this now and a lot of times it will work if you have a mat and the painting's a little bit bigger than the matted area you can kind of maneuver it around and find a way that it would crop nicely. So I think I'll kind of crop it like that yeah maybe like that there and and that should work and also too let me show you another little tip about the mat. A lot of people ask will the pastel dust fall on the mat and I heard an expression years ago called do a reverse bevel make the bevel on the reverse side and so I was thinking I've got to tell the framer to do a reverse bevel the bevel is just this little angle that they have in the mat. Well all the reverse bevel is is to flip the mat over okay it's not a fancy thing the framer does it's a regular mat and you flip it upside down normally this bevel goes on the front of a piece of artwork you see the bevel like that the reason we don't do that with pastel work is if any dust falls we've literally got a little ramp here for the dust to fall onto that little area that little white area right there so a reverse bevel or flipping it over in regular terms okay flipping it backwards in there keeps the dust it's not going to fall here because the the mat is against the glass it's going to fall down behind it on that bevel that's on the opposite side so that's a really practical thing to keep your paintings if you're selling them or hanging them yourself to where you don't have pastel dust that falls down and gets in front of the mat okay so reverse bevel is just flipping your mat over the opposite side okay so I am forced on this demonstration to do a matted piece because I don't have a frame that's going to fit this exactly okay so let's get started framing this I'm going to show you all the tools to do that okay so I thought it would be good to dissect an actual painting so we can kind of see what's going on behind the artwork okay this was a piece that got a little damaged on the back so this is an appropriate piece to take apart okay so this is what's called the dust cover and I guess they named it that because it kind of protects getting dust in the back of your painting if it's hanging on a wall it's not going to get much dust in it but um it does kind of protect what's going on behind here now these are called points that are literally the little um points that go into the frame that hold the mounting board down so it won't wiggle around and I'm going to actually take these out and sadly I cannot find my pliers my husband does home renovation we have a garage full of tools but I cannot find them right now so I'm using these little scissors to get these little points out they come out pretty easily you know it's not too hard so I'm just kind of pushing down and pulling them out for now okay now we have our points out and we have our mounting board this is just a foam board that fills up the entire back of the frame you know pretty snugly you want to cut it kind of um form fitting to the frame okay so there's the mounting board now this was a frame that was done with a mat so I'm going to pull it out gently a piece of art I should say with the mat I have it upside down and this is a painting that I did that was of a plate of sushi I love sushi now I'm hungry darn it but anyway I wanted to show you this was one that was done by the man who did some of my frames for me many years ago and he actually mounted my artwork to a mounting board okay see how it's mounted on there and if you want a good video of knowing how to mount your artwork it's best to mount the paper before you paint it but you can do it if you're very careful after you paint it but the good video is going to recommend is one by Alan Picard if you just look up Alan Picard on YouTube and mounting it'll it'll pop up he shows you a really great and affordable and kind of easy way to mount your work I have ways that I do this myself without mounting it to with any adhesive and I'll show you that as well but that's it mounted to a board and then it is taped with a hinge system to the back of the mat this is taped literally that there's a piece of tape that is taped down on the artwork and then a piece across to hold it more snugly and then a piece across this piece to hold it so that you have a hinge now that again is what goes into the frame and the mounting board once again you see that now I'm going to show you a couple of little things of how to use tools to do this yourself so instead of doing this one putting it back together again I'm going to show you literally how I cut the board and again a little disclaimer mine might not be as professional as someone like it if you're going to have a piece of art in a show or giving to a client you're just worried they're nitpicky or they're going to take the back of the painting off and you want it just right I mean you may want to consider the professional frame or option but I have ways that I can do it that work for me okay so now this is the one that has a mat in it already I'm going to use it with this other painting that I did that doesn't necessarily fit it but I'm going to crop it okay and again this has the plastic on it that will come off okay so I'm going to crop this painting to about so so that it fits in here now I need to cut a board that's bigger than this one okay bigger than this one to fill up all of this okay so I'm going to use another piece of this foam core board okay to cut it to fit the back of this this one's a little messy but again I would I take more time to make this look really nice when I'm not just making a video for you guys okay so I've got to cut that to fit that and but for that well actually I'll go ahead and cut it but I want to show you we've got to clean this really good because once you put your artwork in there you don't want anything in there because you're going to close it all up and if you see a little dust spec it's like oh man you got to take it all back apart again but let's go ahead and just cut this mat board I'm going to show you another tool that you can use for that all right so how big is our opening here it's about 11 and a half inches so I want to go just under that because I want this to fit you don't want it so tight you can't get it in there so I'm going to go about 11 and a quarter just a little bit more just 11 and a quarter so I'm just going to make a mark on my board okay so we have our marks here for how big the board needs to be how are we going to cut that you can't really put it in a paper cutter it's going to smush all of this okay so I found another neat little tool this is another Logan product it's called a Logan straight cutter all right it has a little blade in it you buy these little replacement blades okay and it pushes down and cuts the board and it's got a neat little guide here when you push down to cut a little guide that you can run along the line okay so unfortunately let me see if I can set this up where you can see it better all right I've turned the camera to where hopefully you can see this this is my edge that I have to cut I actually noticed I need to cut it inside a little bit more because it's a little bit too wide but what I do is I put it normally I'm in my studio and I put it on my table I put it on a table or something where the edge is it's just the line is just over the edge because if you put it way out here and push down to cut you're going to bend your board so you want to have it pretty close okay so there we go now I put my arm down to support it here's my little Logan straight cutter this is that little groove I was telling you about right there that you you put along the edge of the line once you make a cut but this is where you press down and you go ahead and you kind of get it cut into the board all right now I'm just going to push my hand a little forward this takes a little finesse but once you get the hang of it it's not too hard I'm going just on the inside of the line again because my line was a little too wide that's why sometimes I make my line a little longer than what I need to cut so pretty good I got a little wider right here okay but we got that part done now let's do the next one I won't talk on this one so hopefully I can do it better here's the guide right here that little guide that I'm following the line with and I'm kind of press it I pressed too far forward there okay all right so there we go so we got a nice cut okay I did that's where I pressed too hard right there but okay but that's pretty good that's good enough for putting in the frame all right let's put it together okay so now I have my board little edges there got my board to where it will fit in the spot okay so now if you have been using the clear bag system like I do sometimes I always include a little instruction sheet to anybody who buys one of my paintings about how to frame them and also how to get them out of the bag if if the painting is too snug and you don't want to smear it you can literally just cut the bag off of it that's what I'm going to do in this case I'm just going to cut it right off of there and I'm going to do it from the back so as to be careful right so it wasn't that easy so now I have a a board I can repurpose or reuse again and I have my painting and this is one of the ones of the UART that kind of curled up a little bit okay now before you frame or put a painting in a frame it's always a good idea to take the painting outside and give it a good whack on the back okay make sure you hold on to it pretty good up here okay whack it to get all that dust to fall off because a lot of dust does kind of fall off of these things okay so I'm going to sit that over there just to get it out of the way roll this away I'm also going to clean my surface here that I'm going to be working on because I don't want um pastel dust everywhere okay now I want to go ahead and position my painting to where it will fit in here nicely okay we know that this is going to fit in here okay so that means I've got to get my painting to fit in here where I want it okay before I put it down in here now this is what I was saying again about a reverse bevel with a regular mat the bevel is normally here okay where you see it now the guy who helped me with some of this framing years ago he knew that this was going to be on the backside so that's where he made all his cut marks the reason why is because you don't want pastel dust falling down in that bevel and showing right there so a reverse bevel is only flipping it around so the pastel dust falls behind it so we want to make sure this is very very clean okay so I'm going to get my kneaded eraser and clean that very good before I put my painting okay so we want to get our painting positioned in here nicely and it does not fit this board I did not mount this so this is working with an unmounted piece of artwork and unfortunately my board is a little warped too I gotta smush it down here all right so let's see where this mat lines up and I'm going to kind of look I really would like my signature to show in it but I want it down as much as possible all right so let's see about like right in here I wish my uart paper had not warped okay so that's kind of nice right there I need to move it over just a tad okay now we want to get this as clean as possible so you can take the glass out if you like and do it or you can do the fast method like I'm doing now to get this done now this stuff does shed there are different things that you can use rather than a paper towel to keep the little dusty particles from getting on the glass but usually I'm pretty good at getting it all off okay when you have your painting in place and you have everything where you want it then it is the time to use this point driver okay the Logan dual drive point driver I just press it down a little bit because the foam is um foam board is kind of flexible and you shoot okay and I usually put two per side and I'm still careful with my painting because you know there is pastel dust you want to be careful to get down far enough here to where you don't shoot out of the back of the frame here so that's why I recommend pressing down a little bit plus it holds it more snugly in place and again if I wasn't just making a video rather quickly I would peel all this off before putting my new uh tape on and paper we have our points in place all right so now this is not moving okay so isn't that nice not moving around we're all good it's all clean and ready again I would put a business card back here and I have a double sided business card that I get from moo.com m-o-o.com it's a great place to order business cards um because you can get various paintings on the back you can order one set of cards and get all kinds of paintings you don't have to have them double sided you can have just paintings so I usually just put a card on the back I would normally make this neater and everything make sure you put it it doesn't really matter because it's going to be covered up but I still like to put it where it's going to be right side up if somebody takes the painting apart okay so I've got my business card there now we got to put this dust cover on which is the brown paper it just looks like packaging paper so how we're going to do that is we're going to use the um ATG gun again okay so this gun is going to hold all of the tape that um you use to adhere the paper to all right so adhesive tape gun we're going to squeeze the trigger after we press it down all right so I'm going to put it down sometimes the back of your frame is really wide and makes this easy and sometimes it's really narrow so you got to pay attention to what you're doing here then you let go of the trigger as soon as you're ready to release it okay so turn it push it down where you want it pull the trigger roll keep the trigger pulled roll roll roll roll roll let go again oops and be careful because you'll get your fingers on it press the trigger roll it let go one more time to do this press the trigger roll it there we go so we've got our tape in place from our ATG gun now we're going to do the um dust cover paper which is the brown paper like this that comes in the rolls it'd be nice if this was the right size right that never happens okay we shouldn't say never sometimes it it works out just great all right so I'm going to cut a piece of this larger than I need okay that looks about wide enough so let me cut it larger than I need okay so we have our dust cover paper you do not have to worry about cutting it exactly to the size that would be so hard right so when it's rolled up like this you just let it roll up and then we're going to go over each side of it and go a little past kind of kind of even so you you know don't have it all crooked when you roll it out and then we're literally just going to roll it down the sides here okay and now I like to take it and go ahead and press down the edges so I can see where I'm working okay now I'm going to use my dust cover trimmer also can be bought on Amazon and the company the Logan company makes one of these two it does not look like this one that I have it's a different one it's about $15 all right but with mine I press the plastic against the side of the frame I press down and make a good decent cut there and you do it around every side and look at this isn't that nice lovely lovely lovely lovely now we have pressed a little hard there we have a framed painting look at that so nice and then it's all nice and clean it's ready to go it's not going anywhere and we just have to decide what we're going to do to the back of it now again there are different ways to do this but often places that are galleries or wherever you're showing your work may not allow you to use these little guys these little claw guys that you put on the back I can't remember the names of them okay I can use these at home and you want to use one that's substantial enough they make one a little heavier duty than this if you were going to use it at home if the painting is not so heavy and you're hanging it on your own wall that's fine but make sure it's heavy duty enough to hold up your artwork it's not going to fall out of the wall now how you do this it's kind of um easy you just basically measure your painting okay find a halfway point put this at the halfway point it's got a nice little point for the halfway point okay and then all you do is hammer these in obviously come down low enough to where it's not going to show on the opposite side hammer it in and then you can also put little teeny nails in here um that will hold it even better okay so you're pretty much guaranteed now if it's for more professional use you're going to need to use the um I have other sizes this one might be a little big but you're going to need to use these um to hang a wire on the back and the way I typically do them is I measure down to make sure they're on the same side or they're the same distance down I use these little screws to screw these in okay holds it nice and snug and then you use your wire you get a little uh any needle nose pliers usually has a little wire cutter in the back of it and you take your wire you feed it through leaving a little bit on this side and you cut it to where you have enough on this side to wrap around and I'm not going to go through the technique of you know how I wrap the wire but there's different ways you can wrap it just so it's nice and snug and a clean cut so it looks nice and clean on the back like that professional one that I showed you to begin with then again you can also if you would like take some of the hardware um for your client if you like and some of these with the nail and the little doo-dop and you can package it up and tape it on the back of the wire if you want to look like a professional framing shop you know usually people can figure this out and get one of these on their own but that's totally up to you if you want to go the extra mile um with all those things or not so that's basically it for getting it framed and again you might want to do something more and go ahead and sign your piece here um put a date on it if you like sometimes if you have your artwork in a show they require something else on the back of your painting so um I I don't focus on doing a lot of shows because my life is so crazy but maybe one day I will and then I will do all those things so this again is a great way if you don't do a lot of framing is to have a basket or a place you can keep all of this put away so you know it's not just hanging out in your studio you know taking up clutter if you have a little studio like mine now I keep this out not in this basket because I use this all the time all right let's set our painting over here because I use this tool all the time for packaging up my paintings in the clear bags by the way one of my patrons if you sign up to come to become a patron before January 31st I'm going to be having a drawing on February 3rd to give this little painting away it was one I did in a demo and um uh someone can win this painting if you become a patron all of my patrons are eligible but any even if you're a new patron before January 31st you'll be eligible for the drawing and you still have to be a patron by February 3rd when I do the drawing but somebody's going to win this cute little painting but anyway this tool is the one that I use to uh oh yeah also too on the back of this one I included the sketch and I included my business card okay so and if you ever do a sketch of your work it's a good idea to go ahead and include it you know unless you really don't like it so um these are the foam boards that I cut with this cutter to go behind all of my little paintings this was another demo I did um and by the way I added more glittery sparklies to these with the iridescent pastels so anyway um make it look neat make it look professional and you know take the extra steps um to do that and it'll really really make a difference when you're selling your artwork you'll look professional people will recommend you and uh if it's big enough I include my pastel paintings and framing tips on the back and a business card okay now once again I know I've shared this a lot about these little clear bags I use these are handy dandy for having in your studio if you're going to keep your artwork around you can touch it you can hold it if somebody wants to buy it you can ship it out in these um you can take it to little shows and have these in baskets where people can hold your art some and it's a lot more affordable than framing every single piece and a lot less bulky there you have plenty of room in your studio to keep these versus framing every single painting now again where do I get these clear bags I used to use um this company um crystal seal uh and they were more expensive they're really nice bags but they were more expensive since then I've been ordering them I think that might even be the same bag but I ordered it from a a company called clearbags.com it doesn't say it on the bag anywhere but you get a whole lot more there's 109 by 12 bags in here and I can't remember what I paid but it was not bad at all now on the site the clearbags.com site it takes a little while to find the bags that you need um but I'll try to give a little link in the about section of this video to get to where you need and then you've got to order you know the right bag okay so there's a couple of different ways to order these this one has the um adhesive on the top part of the bag and a lot of people like it this way but some people like it where the adhesive is here um so that if you're um if you remove the adhesive you can take art in and out without it sticking I actually like it here because I don't really take my art in and out of the bag I put it in the bag with this on it so I don't have a problem with that okay so I put it in here and then I take the uh and I have a video where I show you how to slide it in I have a technique where I blow the bag so that when I slide it in my artwork doesn't smear all the way down it but then you peel this off and you fold it over sometimes at the paintings a little smaller I might have to make it more snug um but anyway the reason I like it there and not here is when the seal is here um sometimes I take it off just to do a little something put a card in and this is always sticking all over my hand so I prefer the adhesive on the top part of the bag okay so that's the company www.clearbags.com all kinds of different sizes that's another reason working in standard sizes is good because you can find standard sizes to fit your paintings this was not a standard size so I had to you see how to fold the bag over it's doable very achievable but if you work in a standard size it fits the bag perfectly and again cut a piece of foam core board to put in the back okay so that was a lot of info and I gotta tell you I'm gonna have to edit this video like crazy because I had so many phone calls during that process and I gotta clean up fast because I gotta cook dinner all right guys happy painting