How many blogs begin with "It has been a while"? Well, here we go again. I know that I have been busy and working hard and now have gotten outside to paint plein air but where the time went since March I cannot recall at all. Just lots of stuff happening.


I am in a small art fair in Mankato at the new River Front Park this coming weekend and needed to make my little plein airs look good....well, maybe better. Buying frames for all my paintings was going to be way too expensive so my in-house handy man has been building frames for me the last two days. He has both the talent and good tools to make framing look easy. I remember back in my school days trying to make frames using a simple miter box with a flat saw. Really ugly frames were the result.

Our local Menards (hardware box store) carries oak trim for the frames. I wanted to have a floating shadow box style frame for the paintings. We bought corner braces that really work well (2 for $8) at the same store. They work with a spring and slide right into the corners correcting alignment as they settle into the corners. Dan really likes the way they work.

A while ago, Larry Sieler on Wet Canvas, Plein Air forum, showed us the strap brace that he used to make his frames. We found a similar one at Menards for $24. Both braces work a bit differently but having both sty

Two Frames Drying at the same time. 

Fourteen Frames made and finished and paintings mounted in two days.

Here are all the frames hung in a line, painted with Krylon spray paint (satin black) or stained. We like the stained frames for the spring plein airs which are lighter in value than the ones that will go in the black frames. Most of the frames are 8x10. We could get two frames out of one length of trim board. We figure the 8x10 frames cost about $4 without labor. Not bad since these frames turned out really professional looking.

Here is a view of how the paintings float in the frames. Now all we have to do is sell a few at the art fair this weekend.