The china cabinet I got from my grandparents has been in my dining room for several months now. It’s very tall and narrow so I’d been thinking it needed some art on each side to help balance out the room.
I already had these prints, Audobon lithographs from a 1930s Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company calendar that my great grandmother had saved, and decided they’d be perfect to move to the dining room. Previously, they were on top of each other so that you could only see one of the prints and in a poorly made plywood frame so it was time to reframe them.
Aaron Brothers currently has their Penny Sale going on where if you buy one frame you can get another for one penny and since I was in need of two frames this seemed like the perfect time to pick them up. Normally these 18×24 inch frames would be almost $30 each but I was able to get a pair for the price of one.
The prints are not a standard size so they needed to be custom matted to look nice in standard size frames. I’ve paid for things to be framed at Aaron Brothers in the past and they do a fabulous job but it’s quite pricey, would’ve been at least $100 per piece. So this time around I decided to give mat cutting a shot myself. My parents had matted some things many years ago and my mom was even still able to find her mat cutting tool (it’s a hunk of metal that holds a blade at a 45 degree angle so the mat has a nice edge up against the picture) so I didn’t need to buy one myself. One piece of mat board was enough for both frames and cost $11. I’m very proud of how well the mats came out after I only had a bit of practice on the scraps, the edges are a little wiggly but I don’t think anyone will ever be checking that closely.
Total cost of the project was about $40 (or $20 per print). If I didn’t already have the prints to put in the frames, I could have found the exact same ones on eBay for about $10 each.
I think having the prints framed and up on the wall really balance out the room and make it look finished. Now if only the rest of my house looked half as good.
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