Frames and Framing: An indispensible guide to making frames

Sept 09

Search Press' practical books contain many examples of pictures to make that you can hang on your walls. You can take these to a professional framer of course, but in the true Search Press spirit of doing it yourself, why not make your own frames? This is a hobby in its own right, and you might well find yourself deluged with requests from other crafty friends to make frames for their own masterpieces. Perhaps this might not be a bad idea, as flipping to the section on what you need if you don't already own tools such as a mitre saw, underpinner ad mount cutter you will first need to purchase them. Once you have, you can read all about how to do it, including cutting mountboard and all the technical woodworking stages such as setting up your saw, assembling and more. Of course, this is the bare bones of framing as surely apart from doing a good job, the aesthetics of the process is just as important. I particularly liked the section showing how one picture looked when framed by different colors of board and different styles of frame. Then you need to know about hanging pictures, and displaying them to their greatest advantage. The rest of the book is given over to the advanced stuff; the different styles of frame, oval and round mounts, coloring frames and a whole lot else. If you are reasonably confident (and competent) at woodwork and want to try something a bit different then this is a good book on how to do it that covers just about everything I could think of concerning frames and framing.