The Framers Forum

Hello framing folks,

As a bit of a noob to framing still, I'm after some fairly general advice to marrying images to panels.
Main question is how and what to? I'm imagining it's typically photographs, or reproducible images onto substrates like acrylic or aluminium.
The only experience I have of this is mounting some photo's at college onto foamcore with spraymount. A fairly horrific process that took no prisoners. The photo's were A2, they were covered in bubbles and everything in a 2m radius was covered in a thin film of glue for days

Marrying images to panels? What a romantic way of saying "sticking picture to a board".

You are right about Spraymount. It's meant for temporary mock-ups. It has no place in a hopefully permanent bond. That's not to mention the toxic fumes...... There is only one thing I have found it useful for and that's sticking strips of decorative paper to mounts. Haven't done that for years.

This is a very complex and involved subject. A whole craft in itself.
Paper to board - heated press and drymount tissue will do the job in most cases. But there are lots of different methods and materials to handle more specialised prints like hi-gloss photos and such.

Hello & welcome to the forum.

Check out - http://www.hotpress.co.uk/Catalogues/Ho ... %20web.pdf

There is Lots of advice here & we offer free training DVDs & schools in Bristol too. As Prospero says...

prospero wrote:This is a very complex and involved subject. A whole craft in itself.

I know what you mean about college - but back in my day it wasn't even spraymount - it was COW GUM & a spreader

If you want a DVD etc - please drop me an email with your contact details to info@hotpress.co.uk

I remember Cow Gum. I can still smell it.

I found an old cow-gummed print that I mounted about 1985. Came off the board quite easily.

I once liberally sprayed a charcoal life drawing I'd just finished and was feeling particularly pleased with only to find that I,d picked up the spray glue instead of the fixative. It's still sticky today

Sounds like an "OUCH" moment!!!

Keep the fixative & lose the spray glue

Steve Goodall wrote:
Keep the fixative & lose the spray glue still havn't got a quote button

Lose the fixative as well, it's not the framers job to fix charcoal or pastels, fixative can change the colour of pastels, leave it to the artist to do

Yeh!!!

Lose the fixative - my mother in law has been using Silvakrin "Firm Hold" Hairspray for this job for donkeys years

Steve N wrote:Steve Goodall wrote:
Keep the fixative & lose the spray glue still havn't got a quote button

Lose the fixative as well, it's not the framers job to fix charcoal or pastels, fixative can change the colour of pastels, leave it to the artist to do

Well, in this case I was the artist so I gave myself permission. If only I'd warned myself of the dangers beforehand!

And yes, every life drawing student tries hairspray at some point. It doesn't do a great job, but perhaps in this instance would have been better than Spraymount

even worse - try using spraymount instead of Silvakrin...

...and as old punk & a (former person with hair) proud supporter of the "mohawk" - rather than the "mohican" hair style - spraymount would have been ideal...

...until you wanted to brush it out - OUCH INDEED!!!

If only I knew how to load pictures - oh how you would laugh...

...but then again - oh how I would have to beat you to death

Thanks for the help folks, Particularly the pdf Steve, very much appreciated again.
I know what machinery I need to save up for next (and who to come to ). Until then I'll reserve the spray mount for hair styling only