I’m matting and framing some pieces that have been sitting around a while, among them this original I commissioned from  kacey. It was executed on a 9" by 12" sheet of illustration board, which is just the right size—if the art had been centered on the board! Unfortunately, it’s crowded down into the lower left corner, making it impossible to mat and frame in any conventional fashion.

The only workable, albeit imperfect, solution was a “float”. Instead of hingeing the art to the back of the mat, the art instead is affixed to the backing using strips of double-sided scrapbook tape, which is acid-free. Unfortunately, if the illustration board expands or shrinks due to changes in temperature or humidity, there is a risk that it will pop free of the backing, but there’s no help for it.

The backing is a sheet of matboard in a deep, rich red, providing the same visual interest as the inner mat of a conventional double mat. Because illustration board is as thick as matboard, the marbled black foreground mat had to be lifted above the backing using strips of Fome-cor® board as shims and stiffeners, to hold the glazing away from the surface of the art. The end result is to create a shallow shadow-box effect, although the bright flash-lighting washes it out in the photo.

The lesson for today, folks, is: respect live area even if you aren’t sure what use your customer has in mind for your art. (If you don’t know what live area is, just look it up on Google.) Leave plenty of margin on all sides, or you may leave that customer swearing—and if he or she is a professional art director, you may lose the client permanently.