I Was Framed!

Or maybe we should call this particular entry "Picture Framing 101". I have heard people complain about the difficulty of picture framing. I am going to attempt to make it at least somewhat easier.

A few months ago, my friend Val from England sent me this beautiful little watercolor that she painted. It is of a Scottish beach.

Somehow I don't put Scotland and beaches together, but I guess that it is logical that they do have some. I think of Scotland as all cliffs and craggy mountains.

Anyway, she painted this for me of a beach scene. It special because Walter went there on a business trip a couple of years ago and loved it.

I am ashamed that I hadn't framed it sooner and hung it somewhere. I decided that it would look great in the living room of the Clockwork Cottage, over the new bachelor's chest that Tessie rejected.

Whilst framing it, I thought that you could come along for the ride.

In the first photo, you can see that I have marked off with a T-square the area that I want to use. I decided not to mat it because the painting itself measures 2 3/4 X 2 inches.

I selected regular miniature picture framing stock. You can tell it from other molding because it is routed on both sides. The front is fancy and the back has just a recess on one edge.

When I first started out, I had a terrible time understanding why, when I cut my miters, my frames kept coming out too large. It was because the true corner should be marked atop the edge of the recess and not on the edge of the inner frame. In this photo you can see that I have penciled a mark on the recess where I want the corner of the picture to lay.

I do the same thing on both ends of all four pieces, making sure that the opposites match in length. On this photo you can see that the watercolor is laying on the lip with the corner exactly at the edge of the back piece. In other words, the piece you see continues under the watercolor by about 1/16".

After I finished cutting the pieces, I did the usual stain, dry, glue and put in the jig routine. I let that dry and then I set the watercolor in the recess behind the frame.

As soon as I had it finished, Tessie showed up and tried to claim it for Spiderwort Manor. Darn! I thought she had forgotten about that. No such luck!

After a small struggle, she let go and made me promise to go back to work on the tea shop. She seems to think that I should do at least as much work on her projects as I do on Zar's and do hers first!

She announced "Anytime you want to quit on the tea shop and work on Spiderwort Manor, you can. You just can't keep sneaking off to work on Clockwork Cottage!"

"Wanna bet?"( I said that to myself, very quietly.) She can't stay awake 24 hours a day. When she sleeps, my time is my own!

I wonder if she has any of that sleeping draught left over from the time she put Zar to sleep for three days...... I am going to go look now.

See you tomorrow.