Framing 101

As I usually do when I get bored, I decided to create another project for my fiancée Kate and I to work on (much to her dismay). I recently received my diploma and CPA certificate in the mail and thought it would be cool to frame them.

She and I worked on an Illini collage type project a few years ago. It was a collection of Illini men's basketball season tickets, Final Four tickets, and articles from the 2004-2005 basketball season. I had the pleasure of attending the Final Four games in St. Louis (a perq of having season tickets that year) and thought it would be cool to frame it all. We purchased a big silver frame for about $30, some blue foam board, and some orange construction paper. After 1 solid week of work we finished the collage. It turned out pretty well considering that we cut everything by hand with scissors or a razor blade. Many of the lines weren't straight and edges were rough, but we worked hard on it and were proud of the result (I'll post a picture soon.) After seeing our hard work and future potential, her mom bought her a real mat cutting set. Kate used her matting set to frame some photos for other family members and I thought it would cool to give it a go making a diploma frame.

We went shopping at Hobby Lobby and purchased 2 sleek black diploma sized frames (~16.5" X 13.5") for $13.99 each. I also purchased a larger sleek black frame (16" X 20") for $17.99 to match the smaller frames. We also purchased 4 large pieces of black mat board in case we made any mistakes in cutting. Using the mat cutter, we first cut out two large squares of mat board the size of the frame. We took the first square of mat board and penciled in borders of 1&3/8" for the sides and 1&1/8" for the top and bottom. We used the mat cutter and cut out the center square. Next, we took the second square of mat board and penciled in borders of 1&5/8" for the sides and 1&3/8" for the top and bottom (to create wider edges and a smaller square in the middle). We again used the mat cutter to cut of the center square. Both pieces cut well and turned out nice. We laid the first mat board down into the frame, then we laid the second one on top, centered the diploma, and added on the back. I was hesitant to add tape on the corners of the diploma to hold it in place. The back seems to hold everything tight enough so that the tape isn't necessary.

We only finished one of the frames so far, but I think that it turned out really great. I bought the larger frame to frame my undergraduate diploma with a nice picture of the campus framed above it. We anticipate it will be more difficult cutting 2 squares on 1 larger piece of mat board. I'm looking forward to working on this project some more. Hopefully in a few years I'll have an office and somewhere to hang them. For now, I'll just look at them in my room with a sense of framing accomplishment.

Given the price of custom framing these days, working on this project was fun and much more inexpensive than purchasing a custom frame. A custom frame similar to the one we created would cost about $80-$100. Our cost in creating the frame was about $16.