Framing is all about preserving memories and putting them on display.
Almost anything can be put in a frame - from photos to clothing to flowers and sculptures; anything from precious heirlooms to awards and sometimes to the unusual.
One of the unusual items Noel Flynn, owner of the Frame Factory in Roseville, encased is a statue of St. Clare that stands in the St. Clare Catholic Church in Roseville. The statue is displayed in the church in a 10-inch deep shadow box, she said.
Aaron Wynn, the lead framer for Aaron Brothers store in Roseville, said among the most unusual items he has framed were a race car driver's entire suit - encased in an 8-foot shadow box - and an old Chinese scroll in a 6- by 8-foot shadow box.
"We do a lot of (Sacramento) Kings stuff," Wynn said.
Norma Dobbins, owner of The Great Frame Up in Roseville, said the oddest items in her five years in the business was a Japanese straw cape replica of one used in the rice fields in the early 1920s.
That was encased in a plexi box, she said.
"We also did one from World War II," Dobbins said. "A veteran from that war parachuted into Yugoslavia. It took him five months to hike out. He was disguised in native clothing.
"Years later, his son found the sandals his father used during his long walk out and had them framed."
At the Great Frame Up, work is done by Reed Powers, a 33-year veteran of framing.
The shop also has framed a catcher's mask from 1942, said Dobbins, who will leave the business at the end of February after five years.
In the framing business for more than 24 years, Flynn has been involved in the Roseville store since 1992, first as manager and then as owner since 2002.
Like Wynn and others in the business, Flynn helps customers sort through and select the mat types and colors.
There are 400 to 500 mats and colors from which to choose, Flynn said.
"The proper mat enhances the color of the piece, the theme of the piece," he said.
He cuts mats to the exact measurement using a Wizard Mat Designer computer program. The computer program can produce even beveled cuts.
"Then I help select the frame," from among hundreds of different woods and styles," Flynn said.
The selected wood is ordered and then Flynn cuts and builds the frame in his workshop in the rear of the store.
Customers can choose walnut, oak and other familiar varieties from the United States. But there are also exotic woods such as ramen, which is similar to mahogany and comes from South America and Southeast Asia, and exquisite lacewood.
"There's a lot of veneer used these days," Flynn said.
Solid wood frames are much more costly, he added.
The cost of a custom frame can run from less than $100 to many thousands of dollars, said Aaron Brothers' Wynn.
Even the glass is space-age material, designed to protect the items inside. Museum glass, about four times as expensive as ordinary glass, is top of the line for framers. The glass, developed for space-age optics, protects against ultraviolet rays and is non-reflective.
Do-it-yourselfer brave enough to take on the task of framing will need a big matboard cutter, a heat press, glass cutter, T-square and tape measure, and of course, the proper frame of mind.
