How Can Picture Frame Spacers Can Add or Ruin The Beauty of Your Artwork?

When framing pictures under glass, it’s a good idea that the picture won’t touch the glazing material. That is why picture frame spacers may come in handy. For those who don’t know picture frame spacers, these are basically little pieces of plastic, which are placed around the glazing’s edge and sit between the art and the glazing. Their sizes may differ and every size allows different air cushion levels. They are also available in several colors, mainly black and clear, so they blend in with your frame and art for unobtrusive effect.

Picture Frame Spacers and Their Importance

Picture frame spacers are used for art framing and custom art framing. These add some space within the frames and prevent glazing from contact with the photo, painting or any kind of visual arts, providing protection from damages.

If there are no picture frame spacers, the image might get stuck or buckle to the glazing, which could cause damage. This might also cause some problems once you reframe your art or photo in the future. Picture frame spacers enable air circulation, which prevents the formation of destructive mildew and mold.

Picture frame spacers are also important for the reason that these offer a smooth surface between the framing material and edge of the glass. It doesn’t only protect you from any possible injury when installing glazing into the rabbet of the frame, but also it will keep rough edges from digging into the materials of the frame, shedding paint particles onto the art.

How to Choose Picture Frame Spacers

Some of the best picture frame spacers to choose from include fillets, timber slip frames, and synthetic extruded sections that often come with double-sided adhesive coated to a surface.

If you like to determine the picture frame space to use for your picture or art framing project, these are the different factors that you should take into consideration

• Ease of use
• Picture frame spacer’s color
• Depth of the spacer required
• The material used

It is important to know the material used for a picture frame spacer, especially if you need something acid-free and archival. Most of the commercially available spacers are an extruded rectangular hollow tube or solid plastic strip. Such plastic spacers frequently have double-sided adhesive applied to a surface. The adhesive that was used for picture frame spacers is to make them in position to the glazing material’s surface. You can make a picture frame spacer from metal, timber, foam boards, and cardboard. The timer picture frame spacers can be just simple square edge profile that’s functional.

Usually, plastic spacers are available in different thicknesses. For deeper applications where colored liners are required, you may glue the mat board to the foam board and cut into the required widths. The strips can be glued to the frame that molds between the art work and glass. It’s an advantageous method if you like the picture frame spacer as well as the backing material to match, especially if you want an art work floating on the mat backing.

You may combine picture frame spacers with matting and framing using stepped frames to make an interesting depth in your photos while adding extra benefits of increased air gap from the acrylic front or glass.

Why PlexiGlass Picture Framing

Introduction of PlexiGlass has significantly changed the trend of picture framing industry. People have a better option to glass to show off their creative artworks in a sophisticated way. Plexi glass doesn't just look similar to glass but also has some definite benefits that simple glass can't provide you. This difference of performance makes the Plexiglass one of the most obvious choice when it comes to picture framing.

Plexiglasspicture framing can provide your latest artwork a definitely sleek look that will also suit perfectly on your modern walls. 

Benefits Of Plexiglass Picture Framing 

Plexi glass picture frame | img: luminati.co.uk

   

Weight:
Plexiglass is quite lighter compared to usual glass. This means when you use Plexiglass for your picture framing, the assembly at whole will have lower weight and thus less probability of harm in the case if it falls down from where it is mounted. Also it makes it easier to transport your whole framed assembly from one place to another.

Clarity:
Though technically Plexiglass is not a glass, the clarity you get with Plexiglass is quite similar to that of glass. The only drawback with Plexiglass is its scratchy nature. However, there are improved versions of Plexiglass available for framing, it is still more scratchy than glass. Also Plexiglass is clearer than glass due to less amount of glares.

Thermo-formability:
Plexiglass, being acrylic product made of petroleum, possesses great flexibility and hence you can try using plexiglass for unusually shaped picture frames too. It allows you be creative with your framing assembly.

Shatter Resistance:
Plexiglass shows more strength and more shatter resistance compared to the glass. A Plexiglass pane can withstand more pressure than the same thickness of usual glass pane. It means that a plexiglass framing assembly would never shatter down into dangerous pieces as that of glass when broken by a reasonably heavy impact.

UV Protection:
After prolong artificial and outdoor exposure to light, Plexi glass doesn't change in looks. It means that Plexiglass is quite resistant to UV rays and it doesn't harm your artwork for long time. However, for preservation purpose, it is advised to use thin UV protective film with Plexiglass to save the artwork from UV rays.

Easy transportation:
Due to durability, lightness and flexibility level, Plexiglass is less likely to get broken or harmed while transportation. Especially when transporting the artwork over long distance, Plexiglass is far ideal than glass.

Color Choice:
Plexiglass comes in variety of colors which not only look good but also protects the artwork from harmful UV rays and sunlight. In case if you want to be creative with your Plexiglass framing, this is great option.

Decorative:
Due to sleek look of Plexiglass picture frames and quite plain structure, Plexiglass picture frames look quite elegant and sophiticated and makes clear display of your artwork which adds alive charm to your place. 

So if you are looking for picture framing for your artwork that looks great and performs even better, be sure you checkout Plexiglass picture frames before making your purchase. It is really worth checking out.

3 types of (intangible) frames you never knew about

Apart from Art and picture frames there are other types of frames too that work in our lives, but most of us are not aware of them.

3 types of frames that are totally unrelated to art & picture framing (and interesting as well)

1- Fact frames

Fact frame means point of view a person looks at any situation. People look at situation with either negative frame or positive frame.
 

Fact frames

An interesting effect related to this fact is Framing effect which is a psychological effect of cognitive bias when people are forced to make particular choice between a positive and negative frame of situation. 

When positive frame is represented, people tends to avoid risks, while when the negative frame is represented, people tend to find risk. Making it no more complex, let's have a real life example.

In 1981, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman carried out a survey to figure out how different phrasing affected participants' responses to a choice in a hypothetical life and death situation!

In that survey, participants were asked to make choice among two different teatment frames for 600 people affected by deadly disease. The positive frame said that “There is 33% chance of saving all 600 people & 66% possibility of saving no one.” while negative frame said that “There is 33% chance that no people will die and 66% chance that everybody will die”.

Results were amazing. 72% of people chosen Positively framed phrase which emphasized that 'treatment saved 200 people's lives' while merely 22% of people chosen negatively framed phrase which emphasized that '400 people will die”! 

In a similar experiment, When penalty fee for late registration was emphasized, 93% of PhD students registered earlier while only 67% registered earlier when they were discounted for earlier registration.

2. Video frames

In terms of media and motion pictures, the word 'frame' means picture itself.

Video frames

Frame Per Second is measure used in motion pictures and media. It is number of images (also called frames) that is subsequently displayed by device in a second. 

Usually human visual system can process 10 to 12 images per second, perceiving them individually. This also means that if more than 12 images are sequentially passed infront of our eyes in a second, we would not be able to identify images individually. Instead, we would feel them as a single video or motion picture. 

Early silent films displayed 14-24 frames per second which was good enough to give a sense of motion. But still it was bit jerky for realistic performance. Gradually standards improved & In present cinema business three wide accepted FPS standards are 24 FPS, 25 FPS & 30 FPS.

3. HTML frames

In Internet technology, Frame is an HTML tag used to arrange portions of webpage in a way that they are independent of each other. 

For example, see the figure above. Assume there is structure of a webpage displayed through this figure. In this figure, frame 1 may be a static author photo, frame 2 may be an author description while frame 3 can be a an article or poem written by author which might need to be scrolled to be read completely. 

Basic aim of HTML frames is to keep different portions of a webpage move freely and independent of each other. The blog you are reading right now, is also a composition of HTML frames arranged in elegant manner!

Did you ever know that there are also some intangible type of frames which you use in your routine life, but are still ignorant of? Was the information interesting?

If you know something even more interesting about frames, please let us know in the comments.

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image credits: w3c.org | topyaps.com | shslive.com

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