Alex and I were cleaning up the basement during the winter break, we added some awesome shelves from IKEA for storage. Anyway, I came across my old diploma (I really don't want to mention how old this is). Anyway, this is my bachelor degree diploma. I did frame my Master's degree right after I got it (that was many a few years ago too).
The diploma is an odd size so I knew I couldn't hop into Michaels and get a pre-cut matte and frame. I borrowed a tip from Young House Love where they put a picture on top of a matte, so the matte isn't cut out, just behind the picutre.
I searched through my stash of old pictures and found a frame that would work. Here's my little boy, who is 11 now.
I went to AC Moore (our local craft store chain, we also have Michaels) and bought a large sheet of matting material ($8 but I had a 50% coupon) and some Acrylic Medium (also around $8, but I used another coupon :) ), this is a tip that I also got from Young House Love when they used Acrylic medium to mount a poster to canvas.
I grabbed some heavy books from the office and got to work.
I was hoping that the medium would hold but I was skeptical. The diploma was so curled and paper is really thick.
Getting the edges and corners covered was the tricky part. I left the heavy books on top for a few hours.
I was so pleasantly surprised to see how well the diploma stuck to the matte. There was one tiny air bubble but really not too noticable.
I took the glass out of the frame and laid it on the matte and spaced it to the diploma was centered, then I traced around the glass. Then cut through the matte with my razor.
Then I put the frame back together. Excuse the awful photos. The matting really does look nice (even Alex agrees).
This method is obivously not going to work for a document that you want to maintain the integrity of--this thing is never coming unmatted, but its a great method otherwise.
Happy framing. :)
---Adrienne
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