French Town Photo

Another frame using the black Mantilla frame, this time housing a wonderful warm photo of a French town. The detail in this picture is superb, you could look into it for hours and the overall effect is so vibrant. A double mount finishes it all off. Gorgeous :-)

Amazing Collage

Here is a piece by a customer of ours who makes these amazing collages commemorating her family members birthdays, anniversaries etc. They are so detailed, with photos, tickets, badges, all sorts of things highlighting different memories and events in someone's life. Framed in these rich, ornate silver frames, with double mounting on the main image and a single mount opening for a small dedication at the bottom they make a wonderful gift for the recipient and an amazing record of memories to be treasured. A great idea for anyone wanting to hand make a really special gift.

Harry Lange

This is a very special piece, a drawing by a chap called Harry Lange. Harry was a production designer in the movie business who work on 2001, Star Wars, Bond movies, all sorts of amazing things. He also gave me a job as a runner and model maker when I was a wee lad, many, many years ago. So it was a delight to have this little sketch in for framing. The customer was a carpenter by trade and gave us a free hand on the framing, so we had to select a nice piece of oak for the frame and do something a bit special with it. We opted to use a button polish to finish the wood, this is a type of French Polish and has given the wood this glorious warm colour, inside we used a double mount and the top mount has been floated to give a shadow effect. UV glass finishes the piece off, protecting the artwork. A wonderful thing to get to frame, reminded me of some great times :-)

Beautiful old frame in for repairs

Here is a frame a customer bought in along with a number of other framing jobs. It's a beautiful frame, but was looking pretty bashed about, with cracks and chips all over, it was also the wrong size for any of their artwork, but quite rightly, they wanted to do something with such a lovely ornate frame. We suggested adding a mirror and doing some basic restoration to give it a new lease of life and the customer was delighted with the idea. Initially we gave the frame a good clean, removing any loose pieces, re-gluing what we could. Then we used a sculpting putty to fill cracks and re-model certain areas of carving. Once dry the puttied areas were painted with a red Bole and after more drying time we mixed a gold wax to match the rest of the frame. Adding a beveled mirror and giving everything a final polish finished the job and bought this beautiful frame back to life. Mirrors available with or without giant Cuckoo logos in the middle ;)

Shabby Chic

To frame these two beautiful pastel portraits our client wanted something modern, but with a French, shabby chic feel. We accomplished this by selecting a clean, modern, bare wood moulding and giving it a shabby chic finish. To get this look we first primed the wood and then painted it in a red/brown tone to match the pastels used in the artwork. Once dry, this was over painted in a warm, off-white colour and again left to dry. The frames are then gently sanded to reveal just the right amount of the colour underneath. A couple of washes of thin off-white we're then applied to soften the effect and after a final dry the frames were waxed and polished. This has given the frames a lovely warm, soft feel that perfectly matches the pastel portraits of these two sisters.

Wax Crayons

I hadn't seen a picture like this in ages, the paper is coloured using wax crayons, this is then painted over in black and the design then scratched thought the paint to reveal the colours below. The floral design on this example works really well and makes a gorgeous piece of art. We used a black mount with a white core to give the artwork a clean, crisp edge and then added a hand-painted white frame and standard glass. A lovely memory of a young artist at work.

Eric Ravilious

Eric Ravilious was a fabulous artist and here's a print by him we had in for framing last week. This is a wonderful example of his work and we've used a delicious Mantilla frame, double mount and Artglass to present it beautifully. The Mantilla range of frames has been proving very popular of late, it comes in Black, Gold, Silver and Ivory and has a gorgeous satin finish that adds a luxury touch to those special pieces of artwork, along with the 'invisible' Artglass, this is the perfect way to frame such a fantastic work of art.