Using up mycollection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

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Not your average framer
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Using up mycollection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

Post by Not your average framer »

I have quite a lot of wood pasta frame ornaments. Many of them, I got cheap when Lion discontinued their range of wood pasta frame ornaments. I've got boxes and boxes of them and also when I can find it there is a box of wood pasta bits and piece which used to be available from Aquarti, from before Aquarti became Arquadia. I've been thinking for a while about producing some country french style old fashioned looking frames with a definite hint of the antique about them. Stuff like this is always being sold via Etsy for crazy prices, so I might try the odd one, or two in my shop window to see if they create some worthwhile interest and sales.

I have some reasonable width Obeche gothic moulding in stock and it is kind of the right shape to match many of the moulding profiles, which I have seen on the internet when searching for images of french country style frames. The Lion wood pasta ornaments are much too thick and I am guessing that this might be why Lion decided to discontinue them, but it is quite easy to trim them down to a more useful thickness on my bandsaw by just running them along the bandsaw's rip fence. I'm also thinking about producing some oval spadrels for some of these frames, using greyboard and really tough and durable acrylic paint. Hopefully, I shall be on a winner!

Does anyone else produce stuff like this, or have any thoughts along these same lines?
Thanks,
Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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prospero
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Re: Using up mycollection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

Post by prospero »

I tried the little 'leaf' ornaments many years ago. They were great as you only needed to soften them with a heat gun and
press the on the corners. The problem was, quite a few were broken/misshaped and they were about a quid each so it was
a bit uneconomic to use them once you had cherry-picked the good ones out. :? I tried making my own with limited success.
I couldn't justify the extra cost.

I did make this frame, mostly as a academic exercise. It came out great. I used a re-purposed Magnolia moulding with the running
pattern already on and made a jig to allow me to form a flat section on the corners. Enormous amount of labour involved.

DSCF0098_small.jpg
Watch Out. There's A Humphrey About
Not your average framer
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Re: Using up mycollection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Peter,

Yes, I have found that much the same as you. My approach has evolved over time quite a bit and the cost of producing these frames, is particularly critical. Being able to use my band saw as a means of accurately adjustng the overall thickness of these ornaments to an accurately and consistently to the required thickness has helped a lot, but there is a thickness below which these ornaments become quite bittle and a major problem as well. It appears to be that the market for creating these sort of frames might not be the most easy market to sell into. This is basically an extension of an existing market, which is partly satisfied by secondhand older frames, which don't necessarily always command the best prices, So it's about identifying and producing the most apropriate and desireable items to be worthwhile to produce, in order to be able to sell these at a truely worthwhile price. At this stage, it remains to be seen how this will work out.

I have found, mostly by experience that there is a physical size range and price range for most items, that generates the most helpful resulting volume of sales and quite often defines the available mark-up and therefore profit margin options. My initial thoughts are that this is not especially a particularly easy and in vogue market area. It does not fall into the local market for old fashioned items which look right for in the locally rather ancient style homes and buildings, and it's not really the sort of thing which works well in the many local barn conversions. Unfortunately for me, it's a much more difficult market to be able to be able to fully understand at the outset. I am currently thinking about decorative features on pediment frames and smaller framed mirrors, small trinket boxes, maybe small mirrors with shelves and a few related items. This is onlt a thought at this stage, but I have had fairly good sucess, sell matching pairs of items and maybe the same ornanentation on a pair of matching items might be appealling to customers as well.

Producing cheap and cheerful basic style trinket boxes is quite quick and easy, but the nicer looking boxes tend to be where the money is. Box jointed corners are particularly popular, but also more time consuming to make. Producing these in batches, does not actually make these significantly faster to produce. You can save a bit of time by minimising how many fingers there are to each box joint, but that's about the best you can do! Producing a batch of trinket boxes, which are all the same size and all look the same, is completely pointless, so it's still a bit of a problem. Producing trinket boxes at a adequate cost to sell at a worthwhile price and therefore at an acceptable profit margin is something which I am still thinking about and I have not reached any meaningful conclusion so far. Mainly , I am probable just going to add a few ornaments onto existing flat surfaces on some older style fames as the is quick and easy to do. If anyone can offer any other suggestions, or any particular thoughts about this, they will be most welcome.
Thanks,
Mark.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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prospero
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Re: Using up mycollection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

Post by prospero »

It has to be said that most people just do not appreciate the work that goes into producing these frames.

An old mate of mine used to buy 5x4" 3/4" gold swept frames from Simons (back in the '80s). He shifted 100s, all with
a little heatsealed piccy in. The frames were about £1.50. The rest of the materials didn't bring the cost past a couple of quid.
He knocked them out to tourists in Lincoln for £7.50. A good little earner. A different matter is you had to make the frames yourself. :shock:

I do on occasion refinish imported cheapo swept frames. The standard brassy gilt looks very dated now, but redone in a softer ivory with
just a hint of gold and a grey wash transforms them. Only prob is you are stuck with standard sizes.
Watch Out. There's A Humphrey About
Not your average framer
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Re: Using up mycollection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

Post by Not your average framer »

From what I remember, I may have about 10 boxes of these wood pasta ornaments from Lion and each box has about a minimum of 20 ornaments in each. I need to check this to confirm if I am correct, but it not necessarily wrong to be thinking that I might have perhaps 200 of the individual ornaments. Having already paid for these at the time, it seems reasonable to be thinking about being able to put them to some sort of worthwhile use. There are some quite large corner pieces, which come supplied as two individual pieces which and combined to make up one complete corner piece, but I still would not rule out finding a way of using them as individual items as well. I have at times cut some of these ornamennts to cut into parts to repair damaged ornamental frames, which are needing missing pieces to be replaced, but have not been asked to do any repair work like this for a very long time now of at least five, or six years. I have various corner pieces and some bowes as well, so suitable and viable items to make are very much things that I am thinking about to make use of these at this time. Going back to my earlier mention of trinket boxes, these work best with narrower wood sections, because customers like the narrow, less chunky look and this is not so easy to join the corners on the underpinner, with creating gaps in the corner which require filling.

I am particularly wanting to avoid the need for filling and sanding corners, particularly as this not only in another production process, but also significantly reduces my handfinishing options. In these infationary times, it puts the squeeze on our potential for adequate profit margins and any extra production processes which we can manage to avoid are likely to be extremely helpful. My preference for materials for producing trinket boxes, would be to use obeche fillets and not only do the thicker fillets create the wrong look, but there is also the increased cost of thicker fillets eating into your potential for profit. I don't intend to produce and trinket boxes with hinged lids, but these will be with lift off lids as it saves the cost of the hinges and also added production processes, which again result in added production costs. Eventually our material and production costs, will be something which we need be really good at controlling and the time to get good at this and develop the necessary mindset is probably about now. This does not mean switching to inferior quality materials as these are what make for quality products, but reducing unproductive production processes and avoiding wastage of otherwise useful materials are likely to help.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
Not your average framer
Posts: 11013
Joined: Sat 25 Mar, 2006 8:40 pm
Location: Devon, U.K.
Organisation: The Dartmoor Gallery
Interests: Lost causes, saving and restoring old things, learning something every day
Location: Glorious Devon

Re: Using up my collection of wood pasta frame ornaments.

Post by Not your average framer »

Hi Peter,

There's helpful and signific points, which you mentioned in you last post. Unfortunately there is less of a market for small frames with a small heatsealed picture in the frame and the cost of those frames has increased while what customers are willing to pay for such items has not increased in line with inflation. In these days, making small frames yourself can be cheaper that buying them in as ready made frames, but the viability of selling them at a profit is also determined by the size of the frame. There is likely to as much work in producing a small frame as a larger frame, but the potential to ask for an increased price for a larger frame is significantly improved.

I used refinish frames myself, but I don't really find it worth doing anymore, as I am more likely to make some worthwhile money with other things. There used to be an auction house down the bottom of my town and I used to sometimes buy up older, but still worthwhile job lots of framed pictures, which nobody else wanted. I was not buying them for the pictures but just for the frames and only then, if I thought the frames were worth it. I liked the larger frames, which I could cut up and then make a larger number of smaller frames from, as the smaller frames were easier to sell and the overall sales value was much greater that way.

When the auction house closed down, my nice little earner was gone and that was that! Stacked moulding frames is my way of making various value for money mouldings look really special and still represents a good way of producing items with a low materials cost and a particularly worthwhile and profitable price tag. We get less tourist through the town these days and you have to be reallt savey to display the right items to interest, what tourists there still are. Most of the local artists are not spending any worthwhile money, but the charity shops don't bother much with picture frames and this has created a little more demand, which comes my way, if I am willing to make the effort.

This new category of customers used to buy frames from the charity shops, in order to provide things to sell on eBay and Etsy, but they still need to keep paying the rent by selling things and some of them will often buy frames from my discounted bargains box. It's not always massive money, but it sure beat putting my off cuts and left overs straight into the dumpster. I also get rid of some of my dead stock in this same way. My town is an old fashioned town and it's a place where we all co-oporate and help each other particularly in difficult times and I also have a few contacts in the "designer interiors" business. Not all of these are finding the current business environment to their liking, but we work together quite well and there are times well this can help as well.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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