Thursday, February 17, 2011

How to make a floater frame- Part 1

FINALLY at long last here is my promised tutorial on how to make a floater frame. Since I will be teaching you and photographing the steps while I make my own floater frame, I'm going to do this in several posts over the course of a few days. First, a supply list:
1. Wood: I like to use one board of 1"x3" pine (it actually measures 1" x 2 1/2", but for some reason unknown to me is labeled as 1"x3") and one board of 1/2"x 1 1/2" pine. 
2. Wood glue
3. Tape Measure
4. Strap clamp or a ratcheting clamp
5. Miter Saw or Miter Box
6. Sandpaper
7. Spray primer and spray paint
8. Safety goggles and respirator mask because you just can't be too careful.
9. Wood filler
Ok, so now you've got all your supplies, we're ready to start. First, measure how deep you picture is and decide how deeply you want your picture to sit inside your frame. In other words, do you want the picture flush with the front of the frame or recessed a bit? Once you have decided that you're going to make a "shelf" so to speak out of the wood by using wood glue to glue the smaller piece of wood to the larger piece like so:

This view is how one side of the frame will look when turned onto its side. The small piece of wood is eventually going to be the back of the frame where the picture is screwed into the frame. Therefore, where you position the small piece of wood is based on how deep you need the frame to be. For example, my paintings are about a 3/4" thick. So, I position my smaller piece of wood about 1 1/4" from the edge of the larger piece so that once the frame is put together the profile of the frame will be about a 1/2" more than my picture. This next picture has a kinda weird shadow on it, but it might help illustrate what I mean:

The copper and blue/green thing is the edge of my painting. So the smaller piece of wood is positioned the width of the edge of my painting plus the amount I want to extend beyond that from the edge of the larger board. Make sure to measure that distance carefully and mark it all along the larger board. Put wood glue on the narrow edge of your smaller board, and line it up with your markings. If you have clamps, use them to clamp the two pieces of wood together overnight. I don't have clamps so I use a very sophisticated method of balancing cans of paint on top of mine to press them together :) Regardless of which you use, be sure to wipe all extra wood glue that seeps out from around the edges. Leave this to dry overnight and I'll post the next step tomorrow!
 Let me know if you have any questions so far.

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