Table Mats

Sorry the blog has been a bit quiet of late, but I have been away for a bit of a break and am now fully occupied with preparations for the 10 day exhibition in Wells Cathedral. I have started a new painting which I intended to finish at Art group this morning, but when I got there, I found that it was the week when others were using our space. We had been warned but it had completely slipped my memory. I will try to finish it this week at home, but it is pretty hectic.

Not only do I exhibit framed and unframed paintings, but I also sell boxes of cards. Its a great way of 'doing' something with paintings when they are finished.
I thought I would share with you something new that I am testing this year. I have produced a set of 4 laminated table mats using 4 of my paintings.

I started by selecting 4 paintings which I thought went reasonably well together. I added an appropriate coloured border using the paint programme on my pc and printed them out on a standard office printer on an inexpensive 120gm matt inkjet paper.

I also printed little labels for each design to go on the back of the mat in the same way as you would print info on the back of a greetings card.

I places the A4 print in the centre of the A3 sheet and slid it between the sheets of the laminating pouch. This is the tricky bit as its really important that the image does not slip out of place.Once it is firmly between the two sheets, its fine as static stops it from shifting. I then turned it over and slipped the little information slip beneath the under sheet and the back of the mat and then fed the whole thing through a standard office laminating machine.

I fed each mat through twice to ensure a good seal and the job was done. All that remained was to wrap the four mats in the same plastic sheet that I use to wrap unframed pictures, and create a little label to stick on the front of each pack.

As this is a new project, I have only made 5 lots. If they sell well I will increase the number next year, and if they don't I will give them as presents to family and friends!

To go in the pack, I chose the following 4 designs.

My apologies if it is a while before anything else new appears but I am unlikely to do much painting over the next two or three weeks!