How to Dress up Your Art with Simple Wooden Frames

I recently spent some time adding simple wooden frames to some artwork I've made. 

This ink drawing is quite old (I made this almost 20 years ago). It is made on a piece of plywood that has many layers of ground on it, which makes the surface act a lot like paper. 

It occurred to me recently, while looking at a bunch of mid-centry art, that I like the simple, natural wooden frames sometimes added around paintings of that era. I thought that this drawing, with it's white background, would look better contained within a frame. There is a really horrible picture of this drawing without the frame in this old post here, in case you're curious.

I used basic cedar lath with a nice tight grain that I bought at Discount Builders here in the city. I bought long lengths because the two pieces that needed framing were 40 and 48 inches square. I gave each section of lath a very light sanding and applied no finish at all.

The lath I used was wider than the plywood of the painting (plywood 3/4"). I attached the lath so that the front edge protruded 1/4" beyond the painting front, and the back overlapped 1/2", which added a little more dimension to the painting overall.

I used my crosscut saw to cut everything to length. I used a butt joint, so measuring and cutting were easy peesey. Cut and attach opposite sides first, and then measure and cut the remaining two. If you did not have a crosscut saw, this could also be very easily and precisely done with a Japanese hand saw which I spoke about here. Everyone and their mother should own this tool.

I just nailed them in with some brass brads, four per side.

Simple and unfussy. The wood will darken over time.

I also went ahead and framed this gaffer tape piece that I made for Kit's room recently.

This piece is bold and fun and completely inspired by Donald Robertson, whose vision of life I admire very much. Btw, Kit got a new bigger bed recently and I've made some changes in there which I will be posting about very soon.

Cheers.