Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

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thecreative
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Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

I'm looking for a regular supplier of premade frames, to start with 20 x16 but I'm struggling to find anyone that supplies a frame with scoop profile and over 50mm wide moulding and on a budget?

Currently using some from 'The Range' and hand painting in a matt black but need a factory finished solution.
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by prospero »

I'm sure there are many members who could accommodate you, but as for Range prices........ :roll:
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

I know this is what everyone's up against bulk buying from China! The Range frames are adequate as I'm working in set sizes however the black is elusive.

I've got a couple of samples yesterday of some nice polcore black silver 65-80mm which I have just ordered, 20x16 are coming in at around 25.00 each with glass, backboard and delivery.

Don't really need the glass, backboard, mount so if I could find someone local to just build the frames and collect that would be ideal.

At this stage its a case of keeping costs as low as possible then hopefully stepping up to a more impressive frame and happily giving someone local the work.
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

Even £25 is pretty difficult to make 20 x 16 frams at the price and get a living out of making them. Assuming that you can get them at that price, you still need to pay foe everything else and also get enough profit to make a living yourself to live on. Idon't think many people would disagree that a recession is on the way and that in recessions it's not just margins that get queezed, but it can be available options as well. You have not said so, but I am assuming that you be be an artist who is framing his, or her artworks, well maybe the time has come to do a bit of thinking out of the box and maybe start making your own frames using so basic semi-professional equipment.

This way you also get the opporunity to be able to get a bit of extra margin of making your own frames as well. Reliying on always being able to get what you need from the range is leaving you a bit vunerable, if the range are having supply problems. So therefore, there is a possibility that this might make a bit of sense. Maybe all you need is a Nobex Proman 110 manual mitre saw and a simple underpinning head it a cheap drill stand. Lion Picture framing sell the simple framing head for about £30 and you can be a better quality mitre saw from a DIY store for perhaps £50. lots of artists have gone down this same road down the years, so maybe this might work for you too, Well, at least it's another option to think about.
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thecreative
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Thanks for that, I'm limited on storage space but if I could get some simple kit on a budget to knock them up myself that really would be a big help.

The supplier I have found is delivering the 2 polcore frames this week and from the samples they look really effective however I would still prefer another all black matt option as I feel that may more suit my artwork.

Also use a number of recycled frames - found one today in the charity shop but with a damaged corner, would it be practical to cut this down and redo the corners then fit back together with this simple kit???
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Tudor Rose »

Have you tried here -> http://artimaging.co.uk/
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

Yes, it would generally be practical, but I don't know whether you are going to find this something that you can pick how to do this quickly and easily, or whether it's going to be a bit more of a of a learning curve. Sawing the mitred corner joins by hand is obviously not as fast as using a Morso and using a bench top underpinning head and drill stand is not quite as fast as a normal underpinner. Hoever, the up front expenditure to get your self set up is really small and perhaps you might want to go for better equipment if you decide to taking the framing aspect to the next stage and maybe do a bit of framing as well.

Quite a few people are getting into framing since Covid came along and some are now needing to earn a living with their change of circumstances. If after you have had time to get a bit of experience, you might decide to look out for some affordable secondhand professional equipment and earn some money framing for customers as well. It takes a while to get really good at it, but quite a few of us started of this way, so maybe it might be a good way forward for you too. Also there's lots of people on this forum to answer questions, while you are getting started.
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Many Thanks sounds like an option, not too worried about the time more the cost, I need a few options that will make the artwork look high end for the original, its taken a long time to develop the technique I use, now I'm happy I need to make it eye catching whilst making it a worthwhile venture.
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

Making it look eye catching is always the clever bit, but doing it without incurring too much cost is what it's all about. As times get more difficult, I think a lot of minds will be focussing on that one. Many experienced members on this forum are seriously good at getting that right. Some member just have a good eye for what will look best and how to do it. You usyally don't get there all in one go, it's an experience thing and most of us get better at it as we go along. Quite a lot of people think I'm good at it, but I've experienting with different ideas for quite a long time and not all ideas tern out the way you are hoping and there has certainly been a few that got binned along the way.

I may be quite good at stuff like that now, but I was not that good in the early days. It can take a while to get your head tuned in to the right mindset. I like to work a lot with bare wood and then hand finish the final frame. When I first started it was slow to do the hand finishing bit and took me a long time to get fast and good as well. These days I need to work differently after having a stroke and these days it needs to be about quick, simple and easy to work for me as my abilities have changed since the stroke. You would not know it to look at my work, but I can work as fast with some techniques and those are the ones that I don't do anymore. However I am getting back to much closer to my earlier speed and doing the difficult finishes again,

Having said all that, it's a more difficult market now and now it's a lot more about understanding your market and what people are looking for at what sort of price. There is a lot of knowing how to read the unspoken communication with customers, particularly with women customers. Facial expessions are communication both ways and being able to read what they are wanting to express in expressions and gestures makes a huge difference. I've gained quite a few regular customers in this way. Customers like to be able to read you and they also expect to be able to read us as well. It's not just honesty in what we say, but it's honesty in the non verbal communication as well.

Selling is not what just what you say, but who you are inside too! And stuff like this is going to matter in the hard times ahead.
Mark Lacey

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thecreative
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Thanks for that glad to hear your still at it after what must have been a very tough time.

Ive been doing facebook commissions consistently for several years and built up a decent following this however is a more direct approach,
doing what I actually want to and hoping to drive relevant traffic via various platforms to my website once its live.

The offering stripped back, one size original mixed media artwork (16x20) framed in black, black silver with a wide moulding and no glass, the second a hand embellished print but here is the dilema do I offer this the same size as the original, do I mount it and or put it behind glass? or do I match the original specification?

Hoping the samples and frames I have coming will help me make a decision, I'm easily distracted and onto another style or technique, really need to just say this is it and see where it goes.
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

I'm sorry. but I'm not really the best guy to ask about be best sizes for one size fit all. That's not really my market and it not really my focus either. You would probably get a better idea about that from someone else. I'm very interested in how mouldings reflect the light from different angles and I am largely of the school of thinking, where nothing succeds like excess. I'm into stacked mouldings in a very big way and I don't like flat, featureless and boring. I'm most definitely not into minimalism, give my a frame profile with shape, feeling and even emotion.

For me art without feeling does not mean anything and the same applies to frames as well. Finding nice wide and shapely detailed moulding profiles these days is not easy. I create them by combining different mouldings as one complete profile, it used to be easier in earlier days, but moulding choices are getting more limited in recent years, so sometimes I need to adapt mouldings to fit better together by using my band saw, or table saw. I like are softer more muted gloss on most finishes. It's not about gloss and glitz for me, I want the artwork to live and not be upstaged by the frame.

I also like muted colours quite a bit. I like to add a bit a bit of brown to blacks. Hard blacks are not very common in nature, so I try to mute the blacks with a moderately dark brown. Mixing grey into blacks does not really do it for me, but brown is a nice effect and quite subtile. I often mix a little warm grey, or raw umber into yellows, browns, reds, greens and blues just to knock it back a bit. I also like dead matt acyrilic varnish followed by a coat of wax. I'm really into the soft gloss, that this produces. Super shiney look too much like a plastic looking finish for me.
Mark Lacey

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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Sounds like a real labour of love, long may craftsmanship like that continue, fully agree with your points and thanks for taking the time to respond, very much appreciated.
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

Are you likely to consider a bit of hand finishing your own frames? I quite into using colours in combination and this works much more easily for me, when the frame profile gives me a bit more shape to make the colours work with. Have you ever seen the colours which sometimes get used in conjunction which charcoal sketches, I'm talking about chalk, sanguine, sepia and a darker black. It's not many colours, but used in combination they create some interesting contrasts and under tones.

Well, I do similar things with pine mouldings with a bit of shape, which have been brushed with a bronze brush and then given a rough gritty base coat followed with muted oil pastels. I buy the cheap sets, with about sixty colours, the smaller sets are not use to me. I never get to use all the colours, just the ones that work. The great thing about these cheap oil pastels is that you can melt them with a hot air gun and seal them with acrylic dead matt varnish and then wax them and they look extremely different.

Sometimes I mix a bit of gilt cream with white spirit and brush it into some of the shaped bits on the brushed moulding and dry it with the hot air gun. I like to do this after the first coat of dead matt varnish and then add another coat of dead matt varnish followed by a quick coat of neutral wax as the final finish. In the late afternoon, when the sun moves round and lights up my shop windows, the colours really come to life.

I also have a book about cooking with spices and this book has some great full colour pictures of different colours of spices and I like to mix colours to copy these colours for wash finishes on brushed pine mouldings. I write the name of the spice on a scrap of mountboard next to the frame, by themselves there's not much interest, but add the name of the spice colour and people buy them. I mostly do them for ready made frames. I personally think that the colours of ready made frames that I see else where look a bit boring, but people will buy the spice colours if it is the right time of year.

My spice frames sell well for Christmas, but also during spring to early summer, or autumn. They don't seem to sell at all during the hot summer months, or during January to March. I don't have much idea why this is. I never see colours like this on ready made frames anywhere else, perhaps people like them because you don't see anything like them else where, but on the other hand they don't sell all year round, so who knows.
Mark Lacey

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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Yes I do some hand painting, seemed a natural progression from the art, usually premade charity shop frames as you say with a nice shape and brought back to life with a little TLC, I tend to use the gold ones take out the pic or mirror then used red and silver acrylics rub them back then generally add black as that's what best suits my current work.

Really interested in getting more into it but as I said before something takes my eye and I will end up doing that instead of the art !!!
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

You can probably only do any hand finishing on a strictly limited level, if you are going to be making frames with a very basic set up and producing you own artworks as well. Also to keep any hand finishing involvement on a viable level, we are taking about less involved and less time consuming finishing methods. Fitting everything into the limited hours which you will have available will probably be very demanding and you might not have time for everything. But hand finishing can be done to a variety of levels and basic finishes are probably all that you need,

if you are just providing an alternative to ready made frames. If you are careful to pick frame mouldings to be sensibly priced, you can keep the cost per frame sensible and this should help your existing purchasing and pricing concerns in some measure, but please be aware that your existing ready made frames are all ready rock bottom prices and the cost improvements which you can make over those will be such that a normal picture framer would almost certainly not be able to beat the range on price and much of a living doing it.

You may need to compromise on what will be your choice of mouldings as part of controlling your costs. When I am making my stacked moulding frames, I am faced with very similar issues. As stacked moulding frames are using two, or more separate mouldings to produce one combined frame and I need to keep the resulting price to the customer reasonable, the individual mouldings need to be sensibly price, if I am to make a reasonable living out of making them.

I like to produce these in batches, where I can as this considerably reduces the time taken per frame and therefore my efficiency in earning money, this is often how it needs to work. It is also a fairly intense level of activity and you will need space to do every thing as well. This means space to stack part completed frames before you can move on to the next step, also you will need somewhere to store your materials and somewhere to paint and finish your frames. It's a lot to think about!
Mark Lacey

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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Thanks again, fully understood, it is something I would maybe enjoy down the line, I have in the past extended the painting onto the frame so thats also an option but again a distraction!!

I think the 2 polcore should suffice for the moment, however as I said a black scoop moulding approx 60mm really suits the work so that's the goal, a cost effective 20x16 in black to compliment the other ready made options. Appreciate it will affect my bottom line but if it make the piece look better then that has to be the solution (within reason of course)
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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thecreative
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

That looks about right, only concern is there surcharge for cheaper mouldings then the delivery is another 10.00,
I've enquired how much they charge for the chop.

I'm guessing it wouldn't be worth anyone local chopping a moulding for me if I already had it?
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by Not your average framer »

Simons deliver orders of £100 and about before VAT as delivery paid orders, so you not only save yourself the carriage cost, but also the VAT on the carriage charge. Also not only that, but orders for the same moulding of 100 feet, or more qualify for a 20% discount if your have a registered account with them. Of course there would have been VAT on that 20% if you had being paying the extra 20%, so the saving in carriage cost,and VAT is offten about 40% of what the cost would have been for the same order without all the discounts.

I do this most of the time that I an ordering materials from them. I also try to reuse much of my scrap as well. If you are a small one man business in a not very busy rural town, like me you are generally very thankful, for any ways of saving money such as this. Very little goes to waste in my shop and that's part of how I make ends meet.
Mark Lacey

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thecreative
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Re: Black premade frames 20x16 with deep moulding

Post by thecreative »

Well looks like that's out, with chop and surcharge and delivery were up at 31.50 before pinning and painting and doing the actual artwork.

Polcore has arrived really happy with it for the cost, joints are passable.
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