The middles of picture frame card mounts

[bunn]

A few months back I was at the recycling centre with some boxes, and happened to notice that the cardboard recycling skip was full of large rectangular pieces of what looked like cardboard picture mounts - ie, the middle bit that gets cut out of the mount when you have something framed.    I became enamoured of them and grabbed a huge pile of them out of the skip (what?  I put other cardboard in the skip!  The Cardboard-eating Skip Monster does not go hungry on my account!)

Anyway, I have been drawing on these cardboard rectangles, and they are excellent.  You don't have the bits of paper flopping about like with a sketchbook, they are light, and yet quite rigid so you don't need to put them on top of anything to support them, you can draw with one on your lap.  They aren't all quite the same size and proportions, but that's fine, I don't mind.  They have the odd pencil squiggle on them, but I can rub that out, and they take paint well so I can also overpaint them.

I don't even know what these things are called, let alone how to get more of them.  I'm wondering if I called a picture framing shop and asked if they had any middles, they'd think I was mad.

In other news, I hate writing proposals, and will apparently do almost anything to avoid finishing this one.  Writing proposals is THE WORST. 

Comments

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Please do it and report back :)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think I will, once I have worked through a bit more of my heap of them. They are so handy!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if I called a picture framing shop and asked if they had any middles, they'd think I was mad.

Would that be such a terrible thing? Besides, you never know until you ask.

(Seriously. I have gotten the weirdest shit just by asking. It used to be a reccurring thing in summer camp to go around trading some useless thing -- usually a hardboiled egg -- agaisnt another thing and that other thing against another thing and so one and so forth and then compare loots at the end of the afternoon. I fondly remember the time my team ended up chugging around both a circular saw and a (fake) human head. That got some odds look for sure.)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... :-o

But do I *want* a fake human head....? :-D

I think I'm going to see if I can chase some up, once I have reduced my scavenged pile a bit.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

It was one of those dummy heads for hairdressers.

It's a nice icebreaker!

Do let us know how it turns out.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Go ahead, they might well be pleased that someone wants to recycle their discarded cardboard.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It has to be worth a try. And I have a heap of them, so I don't need to get my courage up just yet!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

If it were this side of the pond I'd call the framing shop and ask what they did with the off-cuts from matting. If they didn't understand what I was saying then I'd explain further.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Offcuts is a good word. What's 'matting'?

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

The colored (or not) cardboard that one puts around artwork in the frame, that's mat board. The verb is 'to mat', as in, "I need to mat that print with the blue", thus 'matting' as the gerund form, the process of making and using mats. And mat board is generally acid-free, so it does not surprise me that it's a wonderful surface to make art on.

(I have a friend who does matting and framing to pay the rent so I have gleaned a great deal of useful information from his rants about customers.)