It’s time for another Virtual Art Walk! Due the the Artwalk Curator starting her holiday early tomorrow, we’re going to launch this usual Friday feature today.  We hope you’ll take a little time this afternoon to browse through the online galleries of some of our most prolific customers.  These links are  a collection of all the artists we have posted about on our weekly Friday Art Watch Series over the last two months.

If you’re not familiar with it, Friday Art Watch is something that we post only on Twitter and Facebook every Friday. We love being able to show you all the terrific work our customers are doing and hopefully the posts will inspire you as well.

Once every couple of months we post a round up of the artists from Friday Art Watch series on the blog under Virtual Art Walk. This gives people who don’t follow us on Twitter or Facebook a chance to see who we’ve been profiling. If you want to catch up with the series, here are the previous Virtual Artwalks.

We’ve really enjoyed having this dedicated time to showcase our customers work. So, in case you missed it on Facebook or Twitter , here’s your chance to catch up. Take a little Thursday afternoon stroll with us and enjoy the featured artists from the last few months.

Pat Gooden – Digital Art and Photography

Daniel Buckscott - Photography

Michael Stark- Painting

Marty Wolff - Photography

Robin McCoy – Painting

Robert Burridge – Painting and Workshop Leader

Cerese Brothers - Underwater Photography

Today I want to show you how you can mount your artwork without even a smidge of adhesive touching the piece.  In this instance we are mounting some antique sheet music. The sheet music is intact and has about 4 pages, it isn’t just the cover.  This method works great for lightweight items like this and could be used to things like comic books as well.

We’ll be using the large mounting corners for this job. These are plastic corners like the black ones they used to use to mount photos in old photo albums. It’s the same concept. These are adhesive on the back and are 3″ wide. The medium corners – at 1 1/4″ would have most likely worked, too, but the 3″ size gives more space to hold the sheet music securely.

These large mount corners cover the artwork by about 3/4″.  So you need to make sure that your mat window will come in more than 3/4″ in on your artwork.

Once your artwork is mounted like this you can then get ready to frame it. If your mat, mounting board and glazing is archival then you can rest assured that this item will be protected the best it possibly can be.

In the case of this sheet music,  if you get a deep desire to play this song you can always get it out and set it on the piano.  No one would ever know it was framed.

p.s.  If you really do wanna know this song about the wonders of Oregon, you can find it here in an archive.

Hey there!  Guess What? All you have to do is “Like” us on Facebook and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a $50.00 Documounts gift certificate.

And that’s not all, we’re going to do it 4 times in the next year, so you have four chances to win!

Pretty great, huh? As you probably know, $50.00 dollars can get you a lot of stuff at Documounts.  You can get a pack of 25 mats, foam and bags, all for way under $50.00. You could also get a few frames or a stack of  supplies and Clear Bags to last you for a long time!

Your money goes a long way at Documounts. And now you have 4 chances to get a nice chunk of free Documounts dollars.

Make sure to Like us on Facebook and not only will you be entered in the four drawings, but you’ll be able to keep informed on new products, sales and the occasional Facebook only special.

About four months after we first framed the multi-opening dog images for our lunch room, we went in one day and most of the images had slipped down within the frame.

The dog drawings seemed extra sad about it. We were, too. But,  the good news is that it was easily fixed.

Many multiple-opening windows can be difficult to attach all the images to. Because of this difficulty, the person framing this piece didn’t burnish the tape when they matted the artwork and the result was that most of the images slid down.

Burnishing the tape when you’re mounting artwork is a good idea. This easy and quick step can save you lots of trouble in the long run.  Here’s how:

Once you get your art or photograph taped to the mat or mountboard, take a burnishing bone (also known as a bone folder) and firmly burnish the non-adhesive side of the tape with the rounded edge of the tool. (If you don’t have a bone folder, a soup spoon works well too.)

This simple rubbing action, or burnishing, helps to make the adhesive grab hold and creates a strong and lasting bond.

Have you read the newest installation in our Customer Success Stories?

Elaine Estern runs Coconut Coast Studios in the Virgin Islands. We’re thrilled that she could take the time to answer our questions. She has lots of great stories and tips for people in all stages of their art business. We especially like her marketing ideas.

We hope you’ll take some time to read the short interview.  Check here for a list of our past Customer Success Stories.