I just saw Rogue One and so I’m in a Star Wars mood.  A long time ago (March) in a galaxy far, far away (downtown), I went to C2E2.  (Here are the photos to prove it.)  I had purchased some nice Star Wars art and have been looking for a frame to display it.  I gave up (read: had to put the project on the back burner because of the piles of grading).  Recently, I revisited the problem (read: finished grading) and decided that the only way I was going to get the frame style I wanted at a price I could afford was to, well, you know:

But before I get in to the design, what am I trying to frame?  The artist is Ben Byrd and he creates watercolors of various genres, one of which is Star Wars.  I really enjoyed his work, purchased a bunch of 4×6 cards, and left them in my desk drawer until I could come up with a decent way to display them.

This year, I became a member of the Polsky Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and have been working on some maker design projects.  Being a member has given me access to a laser cutter, and to get some experience with the unit, I thought a frame would be nice.  So, I cleared off my desk (not an easy task) laid out the Ben Byrd cards and snapped a photo.  I made sure to include a ruler in the photo so I could scale the picture appropriately.  Then, I pulled this photo into Inkscape and started creating the outline of a frame with the appropriately sized cutouts.  The frame had some empty space, so I decided to add a few Star Wars icons, which were easily obtained with a google search.  Lastly, I found suitable fonts to label my frame to get this:

(Click the image to enlarge it)

The frame consists of some thick cardboard as matboard, followed by the prints, the laser cut birchwood and finally a sheet of acrylic on top to keep dust away.  I’m sure art conservators who are reading this post will be shocked at my complete lack of preservation tactics.  I’m sure that I’ll be shocked if any art conservators are actually reading my post.  In any case, you can see that the project is nearly complete, and I need to figure out a way to hold it all together.  If you have some fancy ideas, feel free to comment below.  Given the maker feel, I like the binder-clip solution, and if I can find some appropriately sized ones, I might just go that route.

If you want to purchase Ben Byrd’s artwork, check it out at his Etsy store.  If you want me to design a custom frame for you, sorry, I’m not there yet.  Building big projects takes time…