Oh the Glory of Frames....

Frames...
can't live with them, can't live without them.
Unfortunately they are an ugly necessity in the art field, especially when come hail, come rain, come sleet, come snow, the show must go on.
The first issue at hand was determining the type of frame I wanted. My personal preference was wood, and at first, a rustic wood. But looking at the various options, I thought it came across as too corny cowboy. I wanted sleek, elegant, suave, upstanding "gallery" frames... black it was.

The next step was determining the size. There is a conflict in the modern frame/digital photography industry, and that is their formats. Back in the day, frames and camera files were in sync with their dimensions, coinciding for artistic harmony.
This is no longer the case. With a camera format of 16 x 24 and a frame of 16 x 20, a sacrifice must be offered either by crop or cash.

To see what sacrifice to make, I haunted the various stores around town price shopping for frames, and the best deals I came across were at Crafters Warehouse and Michaels.
Crafters Warehouse had a large selection of the type of frames I had in mind, and if I wanted to buy the 16 x 24 custom frames, they would be the cheaper out of the two and nicer quality.
The problem though, was that "cheaper" was still around $1,300 for the frames.
Ouch.

I went back to the drawing board to see what could be done about the photos, and it didn't really affect their visual effectiveness if I cropped them. The difference saved me about $900.
I think it was worth it.

The second issue has been finding an appropriate box for the drawing set I've been working on, and after rummaging around through some antiques, I found an awesome little case that would fit the size of drawings I've been working with(about 8 x 10, including mattes), and has great character of its own.

The next task is to find a place that will laminate my mug shot series, and from research and asking around places, Kinkos is probably going to be my best bet.
We shall see...

But for now, I have seven beautiful black wooden frames in my possession, and that makes me happy.