The "Art" of Framing a Puzzle

We were really excited when our daughter, Tiffany and her family sent Art a Shutterfly puzzle last summer for Art's birthday. It was such a perfect memento of 2020's pandemic year that he decided to frame it. Unfortunately, there was a weird defect on the right side border that became apparent when he completed it. Tiffany contacted Shutterfly and they sent another one. When Art completed that one, there was a defect on the left side. Ah well... he figured he could still frame it.

After much research, he bought the Puzcraft Puzzle Saver Adhesive Sheets and the Americanflat 20x30 frame on Amazon.

The Shutterfly puzzles are rather thin and loose so we had to be very careful sandwiching the puzzle between two big cardboard pieces and flipping it over to the back.

Measuring carefully, he applied the adhesive sheets after securing the puzzle with strips of cardboard so it wouldn't move.

It's a good thing I never got rid of my heavy encyclopedia dictionaries which we used for weights to secure the adhesive to the puzzle.

When we tried out the frame on the puzzle, you could see the horizontal spaces since the puzzle was a little too short for the frame.

I cut strips of cardboard as fillers before applying this rather expensive $17 linen hinging tape that my brother suggested to cover up the border imperfections. Art had actually proudly cut pieces of black puzzle pieces to fill in the imperfections. However, I really felt the linen hinging tape over the entire border would look better.

And here it is looking quite nice over the guestroom bed which is actually Art's Office.

OK... You think we're done, right?

Nope.

Our son did not know that his sister had sent us a Shutterfly puzzle and ended up surprising  his dad with another puzzle from Shutterfly a few months later.

Well.... we did, of course have to frame that one too. Luckily we had enough adhesive sheets and hinge tape to prepare Keola's puzzle also.

Keola's puzzle is 16x20 and did not have any border imperfections. It was also a smidge too small for a 16x20 inch frame so we used the black hinge tape on the border of the matt so the space would not be noticeable.

We really prefer these circled type of clips to hold the backing onto the frame. It's so much easier to handle.

So there we are. The Shutterfly puzzles are done and Art's puzzle table is now open.

Would you believe he's got six more to do. Keola also sent him a 3,000 piece puzzle.😱

This should keep Art busy until 2022 and none 😀 of these puzzles need to be framed!