Not Quite There, Still

My prints came from WHCC on Friday, as expected, and I redid the picture I posted earlier. In addition, I did the one shown at right. Neither of them came out as I hoped, though. The rotary trimmer I'd picked up at Staples proved not to be accurate enough for my purposes: there was too much play in the cutter head to ensure an absolutely straight cut. Which was really frustrating (but at least I could return it for a full refund). My measurements were also too imprecise to achieve the near-perfection I'd hoped for - they were also inaccurate. I failed to realize until after I was done cutting that a) the picture was bigger than the matte and b) the matte was not cut so that the same amount of space was on each side of each opening.

It then occurred to me that framers deal with these kinds of cuts all the time: when they cut mattes. Not only that, their cuts are extremely precise and extremely straight. So I looked online to see how expensive matte cutters are. I found this one, which looked pretty good - but it's $229. That's a lot of money - especially since, after making the cuts, I'd still have to put it in a frame. And that's one of the cheaper ones. The professional ones that frame shops use seem to cost in the $1,000 - $2,000 range (largely because they're huge, so they can handle really big mattes). If I knew it would do what I wanted and if I thought I'd use it a lot, I'd invest in it.... But knowing nothing, I'm quite reluctant.

So I visited a local frame shop and talked to the people there. I took along my pictures (the one in this post and the one in the previous post) and explained what I wanted to do. They wouldn't let me use their matte cutter (not a big surprise) but they did say that they could mount my picture on a matte (something that I don't know how to do correctly, anyway) and make the cut for $8.50 (for an 11x14). I nodded and said that it would take a lot of those for me to justify the cost of a matte cutter.

Not only that, but the cost to have them then finish the job (actually frame it up) would total $23 + the cost of the frame (which would depend one what I wanted). Clearly, it's more lucrative for me to have them do the work than worry about it myself.

But the best part of the trip was when the guy at the frame shop said he really liked the effect and that he'd never seen anything like it before. Means I may have hit on something original. That would be awesome.