Welcome to our Framer’s Corner!

We put these fun blogs on hold during the stay at home initiative, but since we are back in the shop, it is time to look back at some of our shop’s favorite projects that make us love the work we do!



This month’s Framer’s Corner comes from the owner,
Amy Doty.
Amy has been framing for 16 years, and has quite the backlog of favorite pieces she has framed, but for this Framer’s Corner, she went with a piece that was completed just a couple years ago for a customer who was looking for a one of a kind frame job for his prized double record set by his favorite band Rancid.
As you can tell from the image, Rancid is a punk band. They formed in 1991 in Berkley, CA and is often credited as being among the wave of bands that revived mainstream interest in punk rock in the mid 90’s.

This was a tough piece to come up with a design for, because framing is a precise and clean cut process, which is the polar opposite of punk rock. Coming up with a way to turn clean lines and sharp angles into a raw and organic design took a lot of thought. 

Amy knew the colors right off the bat had to be red and black, so she chose the Black on Red Crescent mat from the Colorcore collection. These mats are a great way to act like a double mat for less than the cost of a double mat design. They come in a wide variety of color combinations from the classic colors of the rainbow to neon pink and teal. 

Amy also knew a good frame to use that was anything but clean cut. The Legacy frame from Fotiou Frames has great textures and accent silver lines that are random and uneven, making for a frame that feels chaotic and raw. Perfect for a Rancid record. The small silver beads on the frame also add to the punk rock look Amy was going for, mimicking silver studs that most punk kids use to decorate their leather jackets. Raw, rough, and not a clean line anywhere on the frame… perfect.
She also knew that she wanted the layout to not only show the album art, but the records as well. The sleeves of the records had a lot of detail, so Amy decided to show the sleeves, and have the records sticking out of the sleeves partially, so that you can see the art on the records themselves, and the art of the record sleeves. This was achieved by creating a half circle brace inside the record sleeve that the records could sit snuggly on without falling over time. Amy did this by taking a piece of acid free foam core and cutting it to fit the shape of the record so that it stuck out of the sleeve at just the right height. To keep the record from sliding off of the foam core brace, she added two pieces of mat board to each side of the foam core, but made the half circle slightly taller than that of the foamcore. This braced the record into place and kept it from moving around if the piece was transported or moved too much over time.
Now that Amy had the colors, the frame, and the mounting of the records down, it was time to try and figure out how to make this piece really stand out. There is a special cut in framing known as a V-Groove that is done in the matting. A V-Groove is a small line cut out in a mat to add just a small accent of color or texture into a mat.

Usually this is a very precise and clean cut, but the idea of the accent of red was what Amy wanted to use, just not the clean line. Instead, Amy decided to take the V-Groove cut, and shred the edges to create a torn and rough look all the way around. Not only did this help capture the theme of the frame job, but it matched the textures found in the record cover as well. The lines in the art are random and scattered, which the unique V-Groove helped to highlight. 


To hold the record album and record sleeves in place in an archival way, Amy created photo corners out of acid free mulberry paper that she dyed in an archival black ink for the record sleeves, and an archival red ink for the record art. The mulberry paper is naturally rough and raw, and matched the V-Groove and the art to a tee. The overall look was raw and chaotic, but perfect for a punk rock frame job. The customer absolutely loved the effects and knew that no one would ever have a frame job as unique as this one.
1706 Brooks Street
Missoula, MT 59801
406-549-8589