National Chain 0, Internet 1

Last week, a picture frame fell off my wall and the glass cracked. It was a frame with 7 openings for 7 family photos, and as it was broken, I went out last weekend in search of a suitable replacement. As these are family photos, I was not interested in cutting them to fit into smaller openings, and they are irregular sizes, so a standard 4x6 collage frame would not do. I went to Michael's art/craft supply store, where they were having a sale on custom framing, and the man there quoted me over $100 to make a rectangular matte and leave the photos taped together which was not going to look pretty.

This afternoon, I had some time, and I decided to see what was out there on the interwebspace, and sure enough I found a super user-friendly (see 1st picture) matte design website which allowed me to design my own custom matte with openings the proper size and orientation for each of my irregular photos. I particularly liked that it gave me distance from each opening to the side of the matte so I was able to ensure the openings were centered or symmetrical (see 2nd picture). The matte itself came to about $20. I figured, it would probably be smart to just order a custom frame at 18"x14" rather than size up to 20"x16" to get a standard-size frame from amazon or something. I chose a simple rounded metal frame for $12, the acid-free backing, and regular plexi (as opposed to non-glare plexi). The whole order with tax and shipping came to $48.

Take that Michael's custom framing!

If you're interested, the site I used was framesbymail.com