Putting the boards together

First thing this morning I took a trip to Lowes to pick up the sturdy hardware.  It was snowing and it was slippery driving.  I didn't go to the Bradford Church to pick up paintings from some of the artists who are putting their portraits into the exhibition because everything was cancelled because of the snow. Now I'll have to meet each one somewhere, sometime before Wednesday.

So I had choices to make about how to wire up these boards.  They will weigh just about 25 lbs when they are completed, and I'll have two hanger strips coming down from the picture molding to support each one, so about 12-13 lbs on each. I had about 5 ways that it could be done. I enlisted a neighbor to help with the decision and we agreed on a method where you use only the two D rings and you use two wires.  It's a little hard to describe but here is a drawing.

I realized that the cross braces were not glued down so I took another hour out of the day to glue them up.

When the first one was dry I started to lay out paintings and the little thumbnail photos.  I didn't want to put names on them (even though, if you look closely, their names are on those thumbnails), but it lacked something, so I introduced some color and that looked better-- brought about a little more balance and color, so I'm listing the names with a number which was when during the project they were painted.  There is no real reason for this, but for me, it adds something.

The top row just has the thumbnail and the bottom has some experiments on shapes and sizes so you can make a comparison.

Now, I've cut up 80 pieces of super industrial Velcro tape just for one of these boards and attached it to the backs of the painted boards, lined them up accurately with all kinds of jigs, etc., and tore off the little backs of those 80 pieces of tape and I'm ready to attach the small photos and name tags.

I was a real cut up today, 120 sides of these name tages.  My nice paper cutter is at another location.

I had to use Goo Gone on the scissors for every 40 squares because they were sticking together.

Now another test.  This time to see if I can remove the paper tags and photo squares after the show because the product is called Elmer's permanent glue spots.I went online to check the specs on it and they don't say anything about whether it could be taken off.  Catherine mentioned that she liked glue sticks, so I tried a piece of paper with the glue stick.  I don't care about the papers in this case, but I would like to use the backer boards again.

Results, the glue stick won.  I am very surprised.  The paper adhered very well and went on very smoothly, and very easy to peel off with no visible residue on either surface.  The permanent glue dots were excellent if you want to adhere your panel to a floating frame and can be removed (although I didn't try it with Masonite) with the Goo Gone.

glue stick won.

I persevered through the dinner hour to get the first board ready to accept the small paper squares but couldn't go any further without the above glue test.  The first board took time with measuring and making the jigs, and now the rest should move right along.