How do you display your artwork to its best advantage? If your work of art is on paper, think matting. A good matting job will create visual space to draw the eye into the work and thereby enhance the viewing experience. A mat will also provide important protection by creating a space between the work and the glazing material. This is important for long-term preservation of any type of art. These are also great selling features if you market your work professionally.

At Opus, we will cut your mats to your specifications. All you need to do is choose the type of mat, mount your work, and pop it into a frame. It's that easy.

Now for the fun part, the actual process. Just bring your art into our stores to help make your decisions. All of our locations have a work area and a full selection of corner samples that you can use to find the right mat for your work of art. Lay the corner samples up against your art to see what colour or texture options will look best. This is also a good time to look at corner samples of your framing options, to get a better idea of how your art will look like in a completed mat and frame.

You will have to make a few decisions when you place your mat order. First and foremost, decide what quality of matboard and backing board you would like to frame your art with. You can choose from Museum, Conservation and Regular quality boards, depending on the level of archival protection you require. At Opus, we always recommend you take care in framing works of art with the best protection you can afford. For more details on these choices, just ask our store staff, or you can read the article "Protect & Enhance: Matboard at Opus" from the April 2005 newsletter or visit www.opusframing.com/newsletter2/2005/apr/prod_matboard.html

Pull out a ruler and start measuring. You will want to determine the size of window for your mat. Once you know what size you want, enter your measurements into our custom mat form. You will also need to decide the size of the border you would like around your image. All of these dimensions add up to the outside dimensions of the finished mat, and equal the size of frame and glazing material you require.

Once you have filled out your form, our staff will review it with you and let you know how much your mat will cost and when it will be ready for pick up. Like we said, it's that easy!

If you get stuck at any point, or have questions, just ask our staff for help. They can answer any questions you may have about the process and what options are available to you. They'll also be more than happy to provide you with information on some of the archival framing choices we now have available at Opus. When it comes to taking care of your artwork, we are constantly updating our product selection in order to suit your needs and stay on top of the latest trends.