The Framers Forum

One way of visualising with chevrons is to stretch your arms out and cover the ends of the chevron with your hands. Your mind will tend to fill in the rest of the frame.

One day there were about five of us in the shop doing this over a mock-up on the table. I looked up to see a man looking in from outside with a very strange experession on his face. He must have thought it was some arcane rite known only to picture framers.

Bagel Framer wrote:Most of my customers are pretty clueless anyway.

Have you realised the business implications of what you are suggesting?

Almost none of my customers are clueless and I'm a full time framer. It's the discerning customers who keep you in business. The others will keep you working for peanuts.

To some degree, you get to choose if they are going to stay clueless, or if they are going to become appreciative and discerning customers. If you start out thinking that they are all clueless, then you won't be making the most of your opportunities.

We all have to start somewhere, but where we are going can be influenced by how we do things, and what we are aiming for. I know it may seem impossible when you are starting from home, but some of us were aiming high in the early days and against what appeared to be the odds.

You wouldn't be on this forum if you didn't have ambitions. Success involves lots of little decisions along the way. Are you willing to dream big dreams?

Ormond - the only reason I've cut the samples down is a space issue. They did reside on huge boards in the loft and everytime someone wanted to see a sample I had to bring them down. They were incredibly heavy - this brought me to the zany idea of making the 4.5" chevrons I now have. They've gone on smaller boards and are out in the garage and are wrapped and easily accessible. To date no-one's taken exception to them.

I think you might be missing what I've done - the samples that come from Lion are a 230mm long piece of moulding on average. I've just made a chevron out of that length, I'm not showing them a 115mm long piece of moulding, I'm showing them two legs joined as a L shape.

NYAF - Ok, maybe "clueless" was a bit of a sweeping statement - maybe "need guidance" is a better turn of phrase. Take the Dad and Daughter that came round on Wednesday for instance. They had a poem written on some paper from 1900 that they want framing. I suggested to them Lion's L667 as the moulding which they agreed on as it looks kinda old. They went away happy as does everyone who comes round.

I have had people who are discerning or who know their stuff - again, I was approached by a lady who wanted me to make 100+ baby castings a month for her startup business - you may have seen the post about it here? Anyway, I turned her down as I couldn't juggle that with my full time job. She wanted Lion's deep rebate range and was quoting me Arqadia mouldings. I too have an artist on Facebook who approached me, but that has yet to come to anything.

I do dream big dreams - I have the group on Facebook for instance and I'd like to think that people will join it and approach me for framing. I daydream about framing all the time, but I don't believe it will ever replace my full time job.