Part II...Friends don't let friends frame at chain stores

Back to the picture that fell apart

Here are some design tips.  The outer frame is black and rather harsh.  You'd probably pick it for a diploma, but not a great match for a baby picture.  It is also pretty small for a double matted picture with glass.  It was bound to fall apart.

Next, the matting.  Pretty boring.  There is no gold in the picture and the white does nothing to enhance the little girl.  There is a lot of unnecessary background.  It  could have been brought in to crop the shot.

Do we really want table legs sticking out her head?  Easy to photoshop and reprint.

So here is my redesign.  I scanned it and did some photo-editing to get rid of the clutter in the background, blurred the floor in the foreground and adjusted the contrast.  I grabbed a soft butter-cream mat, cropped it in close to the image and cut a groove in the mat. Three of the edges have the same mat size, with the lower edge being greater for visual interest. A 1/4 of silver shows which picks up the galvanized bucket in the picture.  A white frame was brought in.

You're professional framer takes the time to think through the design.  My charge was less then the frame store!