Let's Frame Something: Measuring

Now that you know a little bit more about the supplies, let's start framing some artwork! You should note, I'll be referring to whatever we're framing as "artwork." That may or may not be accurate. It might just be a free poster you got at the gym or a document proving your restaurant passed its health code inspection. Maybe it's a bunch of family photos you printed from your computer. Whatever it is, the same rules and techniques apply. Okay, let's get started.

Here's a list of basic supplies you'll need:
pencil (to write down your measurements)
ruler
artwork to be framed

Measuring the Inside (Opening) Dimensions
I've created a handy little graphic to aid in explaining this process. Let's start with a little diagram of our mat board. I'll be referencing the letters shown here throughout this tutorial.

First we need to measure our artwork. This will determine how big we need to cut the opening of the mat board (A by B). I realize not everyone has their own mat cutter, but stick with me. Even if you don't cut your own mats, it's still helpful to understand the process.

You always want to leave at least 1/8 of an inch of extra space on each side of your measurement. For example, if your picture measures 8 inches wide, your measurement for the width of the mat opening should be no more than 7 3/4 inches wide. If the mat opening was cut any wider than that, you would see the edge of your picture and we don't want that! This extra space guarantees your picture extends beyond the mat board opening. There's nothing more frustrating than carefully cutting out a mat and placing it on top of your image only to discover that the opening of the mat is bigger than your image. Bad words! This is why it's so important to follow the old adage of "measure twice, cut once."

Now let's take a look at the artwork we'll be framing today:

You'll notice that there isn't much white space on the left and right of the bird, so our first measurement (A) will have to be very close to the edge.

Simply hold the ruler over the artwork (being careful not to scuff your artwork) with the left edge of the ruler starting where you want the mat opening to start. Now measure across the piece to where you want the mat opening to end. In this case, 8 5/8 inches. As you can see, there's still a little extra white space beyond our measurement on each side so we're assured the mat opening is smaller than our artwork.

Here's a close up:

Okay, time to measure our height. Unlike the left and right side of the bird, there's plenty of white space above and below the bird. White space that we don't want to show once the piece is framed. So we need to make the height measurement (B) much shorter than the full height of the picture (Basically we need to leave a lot more than 1/8 of an inch of extra space on either side of our height measurement).

I realized I could basically make the piece square, so I decided to make the height measurement the same, 8 5/8 inches.

Sometimes your artwork has so much extra space beyond the image, that you have to cut off the extra. For example, you may have three inches of extra space extending beyond the mat opening but only a two inch mat (E) all the way around your image. Here's that mat graphic again so you don't have to scroll all the way to the top of the post to see what "E" is referencing.

When you're framing something like a poster, it's usually not a big deal to cut off the extra, but if you're framing a family heirloom, you may want to reconsider and just allow more white space to show within the mat opening, thereby making your overall mat size much larger.

Okay, we've measured our artwork and determined the size of our mat opening. Now it's time for a little math discussion. That's right, this is the part of the tutorial where I warn you that we are about to start talking about M-A-T-H. Fractions to be exact. This is your one chance to run away, to find a link to click on that will free you from such ludicrous discussions. Of course, if math really scares you that much, you may want to hang around because this might be a good time to brush up on your understanding of fractions. Who would have thought that the way I finally understood fractions (I mean really understood in a meaningful way that was useful in my daily life) was working as a custom framer? I'm sure some of you feel completely comfortable around numbers and don't require my silly little tutorial, but if you've ever caught yourself saying something like, "It's two lines beyond the half inch mark." as you tried to read a ruler, this tutorial is for you.

Reading a Ruler
An inch can be broken up into any number of increments, but the most common increments are halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths (and sometimes thirty-seconds). With framing, you want to be as accurate as possible (within reason). Typically that means measuring to the nearest 1/8 of an inch (remember our 8 5/8 inches measurement above?). So if you know you're dealing with 1/8 inch increments, it's easiest to convert everything to eighths. To make this easier to understand, I created a little ruler graphic.

You'll notice that I've marked the 1/2 inch mark as "1/2 or 2/4 or 4/8 or 8/16" because 4/8 of an inch is the same as 1/2 an inch. That one is pretty obvious, but what if you're measuring a piece of artwork and your width measurement doesn't fall on the half inch mark? First you need to figure out how detailed your ruler is. Is it showing up to eighths of an inch? Sixteenths? Thirty-seconds? The way to figure this out is to count the number of little lines between the 0 (or the beginning of the ruler if your ruler doesn't have a 0 on it.) and the 1, including the 1. If you count 16, you'll know your ruler is broken up into sixteenths of an inch. If you count 32, you'll know your ruler is broken up into thirty-seconds of an inch, and so on.

Here's a close up of the ruler with sixteenths marked in red.

Here's eighths marked in red...

and quarters (fourths) marked in red.

As I mentioned before, our goal is typically to measure our artwork to the closest eighth of an inch, so start to think of 1/2 of an inch as 4/8 of an inch; and 1/4 of an inch as 2/8 of an inch. Once you start thinking of all measurements in eighths, it will become much easier to measure your artwork to the nearest eighth of an inch. I hope this ruler discussion was helpful and not just overly simplified (or wordy and complicated!). Leave me a comment if you need anything clarified.

Measuring the Outside Dimensions (for Mat and Frame)
Now that we know the size of our mat opening (A by B), we need to determine how big to make the outside of the mat (C by D) and the frame (also C by D). Our mat opening is 8 5/8 inches wide (A) by 8 5/8 inches high (B). The standard mat is usually about 2 inches on each side of the artwork (E), but I decided to make mine just a hair larger at 2 1/2 inches. So we need to add 2 1/2 inches on the left side of the opening and 2 1/2 inches on the right side of the opening for a total of 5 inches. This means we are adding 5 inches to the width and 5 inches to the height. So our total outside measurement of the mat (also the frame) is 13 5/8 inches wide (C) by 13 5/8 inches high (D) (8 5/8 + 5 = 13 5/8). I told you there would be fractions.

Stop by tomorrow when I will show you how to cut the mat we just took so many pains to measure properly.