Mounting My Diploma for $8

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. 

My old diploma was curled up and a little wrinkled.  I had to brush on the medium and lay a heavy book on the part that I just covered.  Using that method, I slowly made my way across the whole diploma.  I didn't want to get any medium on the matte outside of the diploma because that would show when it was framed. 

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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