Framed Artwork for School

Quite often, at both of my schools I am asked to matt and frame student artwork to be displayed within the school building. It’s a great way to showcase student art. Do you do this at your school(s) too?
The last few years I’ve been reusing the frames holding very dated artwork. I’m not sure if the older artwork was just not picked up by the student, or the art teacher thought the work would hold up to the bright lights within the building so no pickup plan was established. After a number of years hanging on the wall, the color bleaches out of the art and often when I move into a new school I’ll find the artwork stored away. -I’ve found artwork from 1973!
So taking the measurement of a number of frames I headed to a frame shop and ordered new white mattes. (I actually went for white mattes with a black beveled edge -the back of the matt was black.) The new mattes cost $11 each, which includes a 10% discount from the frame shop. Thank you Tradewind Products!
After cleaning up the frame and glass I was delightfully surprised the frames/glass looked like they were in very good shape. (Washing 30 years of dust and grime off of the glass was so dramatic it became fun!)
The picture above is some of the framed art laid out on my couch at home. Can you see Mr.E’s Op Art lesson? (http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/2011/05/line-design-wshading-4th-grade.html) I did this lesson at both schools. (What a great lesson – Thank You Mr. E!) They came out so beautiful I framed one at each school… same with the dinosaur landscapes. The day after I snapped this picture I brought them into my schools for hanging. It’s a nice end of the year gesture, but next year I’ll start framing sporadically throughout the year to avoid the end of the year crunch.

The above picture is an Adaptive Art student piece framed. It’s a paper plate ladybug glued onto a bubble wrap printed background with glued punched shapes on it.

Hanging Art Tip

I love my rubber mallet! I don't need it often, but it sure does the trick when I want to hang artwork on the cinderblock walls at school.
WI winter temperatures dip way below zero, in fact students have indoor recess or come into the school building in the morning only when the temperature goes below -5 degrees. So if I want to hang artwork on an outside wall it's normal for the work to start falling off within a day because of the moisture that builds up on the inside warmer wall. The mallet is the trick that keeps the artwork up for weeks.
About 10 years ago I learned this trick. I was involved in a big artist-in-residence program at my school and we were using a lot of old, curled up paper hanging from masking tape on cinder block walls. If you whack the tape with the rubber mallet a couple of times the paper stayed put on the wall. We could take the paper down and rehang it with the same masking tape several times if we whacked it with a mallet every time we hung it. Since that time I have kept a rubber mallet in the desk drawers of both of my schools for the rather infrequent times I need it.

You need to remember to move your head to the side when you whack the mallet, there is a spring back action to it and you don't want your nose in line with it -ouch!