Welcome to our April Framer's Corner!!
Each month, we like to take a moment to share some of our favorite projects with our readers, giving you an inside look at the process of framing, meeting our designers, and the fun pieces of art that come through our shop. 

For this design, we have another one of our fun multi-designer collaborations with Amy Doty, Heather Taylor, and Heather Cox! Our team of designers work together like a close knit family. We work off of each of our strengths to bring our customers the best designs. When we get the chance to collaborate on a design together, we jump at the opportunity. 

Some of our best designs come from projects to hang in our gallery. We get to take our time over a few days, all contributing to the design, until we get it perfect. So when we got our newest print from Monte Dolack titled Iceberg Lake, we were all up for the challenge. 
The Iceberg Lake print was created by Monte in 2020 as a metaphor for climate change and the earth’s disappearing glaciers. With vibrant teals, subdued grays, and a luscious green foreground, this piece has an array of color themes that you can base your frame design on, which can be quite a challenge, but we all love a challenge at Frame of Mind.
Right off the bat, the owner of Frame of Mind, Amy, knew the frame to use. A frame that highlighted not only the subdued colors and textures of the rock background, but connected with the theme of the piece. The Bella moulding Teal Galaxy Nebula from the Luna family combines patterns of darks and lights mimicking the rock wall in the art, but also includes a slight shimmering element to accent the cool ice and snow. Moving around this frame creates different textures and shades at every angle creating a unique feel from any way you look at the piece.

Having the frame chosen was half the battle for this piece, and now, with the help of both Heather Taylor and Heather Cox, the team was ready to tackle the mat design. 

The three of us went back and forth on different color schemes that would highlight different parts of the piece, do we want to go with vibrant greens for the foreground? Keep things subdued and concentrate on the wall of the background? Maybe we go crazy and use bright teals for the lake! A lot of playing around was involved over many hours as we would lay down mat after mat until we felt like we had a good match, only to realize it overpowered the piece, or clashed with the frame. 

Both Heather T. and Heather C. liked Crescent's Morman Light Grey, a simple fabric grey for the top mat to help subdue the framing, but what to do with the other mats? We played with a bright teal, but in the end, all you could really see when looking at the design was that mat, and that’s never a good thing. The same issue arose when we tried out illuminating greens. The framing should feel like an extension of the art, and never distract from it, and pulling these heavily vibrant colors took all the attention of the piece and placed it smack dab on the mats. 

After pulling every green and grey acid free paper mat we could think of, we started diving into the fabrics, when we came across a linen green that was the right tone for the energetic grass tones, but subdued enough to not distract, Crescent’s Morman Linen mat Light Moss. 
The balance between the Light Grey linen mat and the Light Moss linen mat not only helped the other colors of the piece feel more animated, but they played within the same color hue family, making them a good pair. The only problem with these mats is that next to each other, they dulled themselves, making the design fall flat. We needed something more, just one more element to make it all fit together.
Enter the Crescent Morman Linen mat Silver Grey. A warm grey tone that pulled out the highlights of the background rocks, and not only separated the light moss and light grey mats, but also brought them together with the piece to feel as if the rocks, grass and snow extended out from the art into the frame design itself. 

With a wide white boarder around the art, we were able to utilize our Museum corners to mount the piece onto an acid free piece of foamcore, ensuring the piece had nothing acid based touching it causing it to burn, but also making it a completely reversible method if the piece ever needed to be removed from the frame.
A museum corner is a small plastic pocket that the corner of the art slides into, much like photo corners used for scrapbooking or for photo albums. One side of the corner has an adhesive on it allowing it to attach to only the foamcore, and never coming into contact with the art, making it an ideal method for archival framing.

The end design wowed us all, and we all enjoy the final results. Swing by our gallery and see this collaborative design for your self, along with a few other new pieces by Monte Dolack.
If you are interested in this piece, you can purchase it in our gallery, or follow the link to our online store where you can purchase this piece in a safe and socially distanced manner: 
1706 Brooks Street
Missoula, MT 59801
406-549-8589