Mat decoration tape

[dcowan100]

I've got a small job to frame a stretched cross-stitch sampler and want to use foam board as a spacer- that's the easy bit, I've done it before but I wanted to cover the bevelled edge of the foam board with a suitable tape. I've got some washi-tape that would fit the bill but wondered if anyone else had used it and whether its a yes-yes or a definite NO-NO.
Co.ments and advice most welcome.

Thanks
Dave

[Rainbow]

Washi tape is designed to be low-tack, so even if it were to stick in the first place, I'd be surprised if it lasted very long.

I've only ever bought washi tape once (for a purpose unrelated to framing), and it was so low-tack that it was non-existent and useless. Some washi tape may be better than others, but it's still not designed as a permanent adhesive.

[dcowan100]

Thanks for the feedback - I’ll try something else

[Not your average framer]

I know that there are others who have had success covering deep bevels made from 5mm thick foamboard, well I have to admit that I am am not particularly sucessful at wrapping bevels cut on foamboard. I don't find that self adhesive deep bevel wrapping tapes stick adequately to the foam core in foamboard. I find that applying too much pressure to the foamboard core while trying to get a really secure board increases the potential to collapse the flat surface on the bevelled edge. Added to that I find that the 5mm deep bevels are often thicker than neccesarily looks right with a types and sizes of artworks. I bought a whole box of pre-bevelled 5mm thick foamboard strips and plenty of self adhesive rolls of deep bevelled tapes and was not greatly excited by the results which I obtained at all.

I really like deep bevelled mount strips, but I choose to make them mostly using double thickness mountboard made up by gluing two thicknesses of 1.4mm thick mountboard together to make 2.8mm thick strips which I wrap with suitable paper and then paint to the colour of my choice. I find this much more satisfactory and much easier to obtain a really perfect result. My preferred paint for Deep bevelled mounts is an acrylic gouashe which I get from Jachsons art supplies. Since I don't know where my Jackson art supplies catlogues are, I am not really sure which brand name of acrylic gouashe it is that I normally buy. As many of us will already know, acrylic gouashe flows nicely and is quite a nice opaque medium to paint deep bevels with. It's not a especially cheap paint medium, but it seems to go a long way.

I like to use two coats of acrylic goache which I find covers very well, but I also sometimes use match pots of Craig and Rose chalky emusion paint, which also produces a really good smothfinish as well, or even Amsterdam acrylic paints instead.

[fitz]

I have used old maps to wrap over the deep bevel edge of foam board in a series of frames I did for an Exhibition of Scott of the Antarctic and it worked very well. I have also used ribbons of tartan etc to fold over the bevel edge sticking it down with finger lift tape very successfully. You can use various self adhesive tapes to decorate the bevel or use your imagination to try something unique. Options are endless.

[Not your average framer]

Hi Fitz,

I had forgot about ribbons! I used these quite a lot when presenting old folded ducuments in box mounts and they were used across the corners of documents which had been folded for very long periods. I have also much later even used ribbons for wrapped bevels as well, blue coloured ribbons are often used as these are highly fade resistant, where as red ribbons fade particularly quickly. I always found that sticking the ribbons to the deep bevel mounts was not that easy and chose to use adhesive transfer tape to do this, as I was worried about liquid adhesives penetraing through the ribbons. I never found that attaching ribbons was a particularly quick proccess and this was long before my manual dexterity had been affected by my stroke. Items such as certificates look particularly grand, when framed with as blue ribbon wrapped deep bevel mount, although I much prefer to paint my wrapped deep bevelled mounts, the sheen which results from wrapping with a deep blue ribbon looks truly impressive. You really don't get the same effect from doing it any other way. Having said all that, painting deep bevels is really so much easier and as a result is my go to favorite method.

I prefer to make up wrapped deep bevelled moutboard strips which I can bevel at the end the end to butt together and paint the bevels after joining them togther before painting the bevels and later assembling the deep bevelled mount together with the front mount. It'sa bit fiddly doing it this way, but at least it much safer to paint the deep bevel, with the front mount safely out of the way. I particularly like using acrylic gouashe paints as these usually have a high colour perminance rating, which can easily be verified from the paint manufactures colour charts. Being an ex-bookbinder, I still have some left over stock of bookbinding cloth which is easy to use to wrap deep bevels and that to paint over. My old stock of bookbinding cloth is more the twenty years old and does tend to need to be brightened up after sticking it place, but a couple of coats of gouashe soon sorts this out. In between the weave of bookcloth is normally filled with a starch based filler, so that it is very easy to cut without getting frayed edges. I cut it using a small rotatrim style paper guillotine, which makes like very easy.

Bookbinding cloth is not necessarily all that cheap these days, but as I already have some, I might as well use it, when the chance comes along!

[Not your average framer]

I don't like the added cost of deep bevel wrapping tapes and too much fiddling around at there have been some times when I have resorted to making deep bevelled mounts using obeche fillets with bevels cut on my band saw. You can get quite wide obeche fillets and I can get a very clean and straight bevelled cut on obeche when using my band saw and it's rip fence, unfortunately the same is not true with most other wood types, especially with pine. In theory, you could use deep bevel mount tapes on obeche, but I would still council sealing the surface of the wood with something which prevents contamination from the wood from degrading the self adhesive layer on these tapes. I still prefer painting my wrapped, or even not wrapped wooden deep mount bevels. The time taken to do complicated things is still an issue for me, but in today's inflated prices material costs are perhaps becoming more significant as well. As a result, I am thinking that both mount decoration tapes and deep bevel mounts tapes, are a cost which is useful to avoid. Buying materials such as these tapes, do not help my cashflow and a significant part of my profits from providing decorative bevels using these tapes, go to the suppliers of these tapes and that's a worthwhile amount of money for me to keep within my business! I am not going to claim that painting mount bevels is super quick and easy, but it's not that much more time that is necessarily involved with using mount decoration tapes, but to my mind the cost of both the tapes and the time taken the create and join the resulting wrapped bevel strips is not necessarily the most profiable approach.

Sticking two layers of scrap mountboard together and then cutting it up in to beveled strips is not a big deal to do and you are making money out of you scrap materials, which costs you very little at all. So maybe for some of us it might be a good way to go. Some of us are still going to be rushed off our feet, but that may not apply to all of us and I am not sure that it's likely to necessarily apply to me. So money and cashflow may count more for some of us. Decorated bevels may often be an opportunity to add a useful amount more to your bottom line and that really counts in a recession. We don't yet know how this recession is going to affect us, but it does not hurt to have some ideas in place for if things get a bit tight. I already stock a good range of acrylic paints and even mix them with wax to fill the joins on factory finished frame mouldings and therefore it makes sense to use these same paints for other purposes, when it means that I can avoid spending money on something else which I don't normally have in stock and would need to otherwise spend money on. I don't personally think that the bottom end of the market is going to put much food on our tables in these hard times, but nice up market specialities like decorated bevels bring in some very helpful extra money and spending too much of that extra money on un-necessary materials might not be the best way of helping our bottom line, our cashflow and our overall business performance. So finding other ways of doing this to save spending money, might be the smart thing to do!

I am thinking that many of us can at least save some worthwhile added costs somewhere and hopefully it will make a really useful difference to us!

[prospero]

It's very hard to wrap bevels. The paper needs to be very thin or you just can't get a sharp crease. And doing the corners
is not exactly easy. You're better off painting a slip or a fillet.

[fitz]

These are examples of deep bevel edges, two with coloured self adhesive tapes and one with the Royal Stewart tartan ribbon. The painting is of the Scots Dragoon Guards marching along Princes Street, Edinburgh. They all went to the same customer, the Pipe Major.

[Not your average framer]

Hi Fitz,

Oh, Wow, they look great. That a really nice job. Now I understand why you were talking about tartan tape!

[fitz]

Thank you Mark

[Justintime]

LJ 945008065 is Larson's Hayseed tape for wrapping bevels and CB801 is one of Colourmount's bevel tapes from Lions.

[Not your average framer]

The hayseed bevel wrapping tape comes in quite substantially sized reels, so much better for limiting wastage. A friend of mine (Exeter framer) who used to be a forum member before she retired, used to create hand painted deep bevels using this tape. I don't really know anything about how well the paint stuck to this tape.but it might be a helpful pointer to someone.