An Easy Way To Frame Prints, Photos, Sketches & More

My mother is an artist ~ I may have already said that many times in this blog. She’s a painter [an AMAZING painter] and we’re so lucky to have plenty of her beautiful art pieces -all oil on canvas- on the walls of our home, for free! Back when I was a kid and we lived in Paris, France, she attended the Academie De La Grande Chaumière where she studied art. Part of her class work included painting and sketching of human bodies from real art models that were posing [with or without clothing] live in the classroom. Thankfully she kept all this work and she just recently gave me some of these sketches/paintings that are all made with oil paint. Since it was meant to be practice work, they’re not done on canvas, but on paper, a very good quality paper, thick and rigid [Arches paper], which was first primed with a special oil painting primer so it could accept the oil paint.

It took me a long time to decide on how I should frame them; I did not want to use the regular frames that come with a glass, I thought they were too bland for something so exceptional, something that I loved so much. Plus, even if there were just rough drawing, there were still actual oil paintings and it didn’t seem right to have a glass right on top. I also considered custom framing but the cost is high, even for the simplest form of custom framing, and I hadn’t decided if I wanted something classic or modern.

So I ended up using very inexpensive acrylic box frames that anyone can find at the craft stores and at the specialty framing stores.

But instead of trying to fit the image to size on the front part of the box frame – that’s how you’re supposed to use them, I guess – I attached the painting directly on the wall and then placed the box frame above.

I chose box frames that were larger than the paintings, so I didn’t have to worry on how to fit the paper into the frame, while the margin around is nothing more than the wall.

It’s also super easy to put them together. First attach the image on the wall with thumbtacks on all four corners, then center the box frame on top, mark the two top corners and insert two thin nails into the wall ~ they are enough to hold the box frame in place.

The quality of these specific box frames is not the best, but I still like how they create volume, how modern they are, and also how they protect the art.

In the same way, you can frame photos, art prints, kids drawings, any type of art. Naturally, you have to keep in mind that these box frames come in specific dimensions and that they will not work with something super big in size, like a large poster.

If you don’t want to damage the art with the thumbtacks, you can alternatively use double-sided tape. I didn’t worry about harming these specific ones, because there were already holes and unpainted parts in the corners from pins that were holding the paper on some surface when my mother was painting them.