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The memorabilia board above took longer to design than it did to put together.
Unfortunately earlier this year we had to move Dad to a residential care home and on clearing out the ‘effects’ we came across his ‘Police box’. It was just calling out to be put together to give him/us a little bit of his history.
It was so tempting to ‘overload’ the design. By that I mean; there have been so many cap badge changes and uniform changes since he became a Policeman and to put them all together would have been a visual nightmare. So a basic yet balanced layout was designed.
His only request was that his last helmet badge and two of the earlier flat cap badges were included, together with the A.R.P. whistle. Interesting here, if you look closely at the two smaller cap badges –either side of the large helmet badge – you should notice that the crowns are different. The one on the left carries the ‘Queens’ crown. The one on the right carries the ‘Kings’ crown. Yes he was a Policeman that long ago.
The frame is a 50mm wide – opened grained Ash, this was given a couple of coats of Black Acrylic then given two coats of a water based soft sheen varnish.
The fillets were coated with Chrome effect enamel.
The mountboard is Bainbridge Graphite M7506 and the overall size is 55 x 50 cm with a box section 4 cm deep.
The epaulettes were fixed using ‘Attach- Eze’- T tags. The first difficulty I encountered early on was the weight of the handcuffs, so they were fixed in place using 20lb clear fishing line through a mountboard/2mm MDF sandwich. The whistle was also fixed using fishing line. This line is almost invisible against the silver of the objects. The second difficulty was this weight in the centre of the layout. It tended to ‘bow’ the board. So to overcome this a 5mm foam board was PVA’d to the back of the mountboard, this also provided the depth required to sink the buttons into their cut outs. Next came a 15mm polystyrene filler, then another 5mm Foam core board. This provided the rigidity required, yet was also very light.
Since this photo was taken, I have now received and added his Sergeants Stripes onto the epaulettes.
The whole package is now in centre position in the shop window and is certainly catching the eye of people passing. I have lost count of the “WOW, look at that” remarks being made.
Something different and certainly a project I really enjoyed doing.
Merlin Framers wrote:The memorabilia board above took longer to design than it did to put together.
Really nice design and very stylish John! I love the way you have chosen framing materials that are tonal with the objects and the subject matter.
I find that design time can be reduced by using CMC to design this type of layout. I measure all the necessary objects and opening and enter those into the CMC where everything can be moved around until the layout looks good.
John,
it looks fab. My hubby was impressed but now wants me to frame some old handcuffs he got from ebay!
Thanks for sharing how you put it all together........ lets hope this doesn't take me 6 months!