Anyone with artistic talent has an advantage when it comes to giving gifts of significance. Gifts that are truly appreciated, understood and respected as pieces to be treasured for life.
Your talent may be photography, or it could be with words by creating personalised poems that resonate deep or maybe pencil sketching pet portraits.
Whatever your talent is, gifting prints, pencil sketches, painted art or poems wrote in calligraphy; a lone print tends to look tacky. But, framing everything you’re gifting, that’s going to get pricey.
A happy medium is to forego the frame and instead focus on the presentation that makes a start on the frame yet leaves the final choice to the person receiving the gift.
The essential parts to focus on that are within budget are your mount boards and backing board.
For the backing board, you can mount prints onto treated MDF sheets that are usually 2mm to 3mm thick. There’s also foamboard sheets you can use as backing board material. An alternative is to buy self-adhesive foam board, which is just peel and stick.
To attach the print to the backing board, you can use a spray mount adhesive by lightly spraying the board, then press the print firmly onto it making sure there’s no creases or air bubbles.
Once it’s dry, use a sharp craft knife and ruler to trim the backing board to size.
The last part to semi-framing your gift is to attach a picture mount over the front of your print. For this part, you’ll need to use a framer’s tape or gummed tape, which is the safest type of tape to avoid damaging the print or backing board with aggressive adhesives. Brown packing tape is one of those to definitely avoid.
Whatever you choose to assemble your frame components, make sure they’re pH neutral or acid-free.
To attach the mount over your print, you only need a couple of short strips attached to the reverse side of your print. Place each strip about 2-inches in from the edge along the top of the print with half of the strip on the print, the other half above so the mount board can stick to it when you turn it around.
This is the hinging method, and it’s recommended for attaching mounts as it lets the paper fluctuate in size based on the conditions, rather than restricting movement if you were to tape all around each edge of the print.
Once you have your print attached to a backing board and then a picture mount hinged over the front it, your print is presentable. It’s ready to give as a gift without the expense of a frame. All the lucky recipient needs to do is buy a frame they love.
To make it more presentable, you could place it in a gift box surrounded by coloured tissue paper.
What you’ll also find is because the most difficult parts of professional framing have been done, people will be more likely to frame the prepped print, rather than leaving it as a project they’ll get around to.