It was a slow week at the frame shop. I actually only made one frame for a paying customer – it was a repair job, at that, and not a new frame at all. The customer was very pleased, though, because in taking apart the frame, I found a bunch of “long lost” family baby pics stashed behind the picture shown and sealed into the frame.
Sometimes the frame shop is slow not due to lack of customers, but because we rely on our supplier to send us the pre-cut frames ready to assemble for orders we’ve requested, and sometimes those deliveries are slow – that’s life on an Alaskan island for you.
To use up some time during my frame shop hours, I focused on improving my mat-cutting skills. I got adventurous, and tried some circles (using a special, very finicky tool) and some “lines” in box shape around the cut area of the mat (I’m not sure what these lines are formally called, but they’re popular on high-end matting styles).
So I did a bunch of mat cuts and then dropped random objects – a company brochure, a cartoon cat I quickly sketched – into them to give them focus.
