Framing a canvas can be a daunting and time-consuming process, but don't limit yourself, it's much easier than it looks. After completing your painting by numbers, of course you will want to leave it exposed so that everyone can see your work, traditionally, the paintings do not come with a canvas frame, however the frame is sold separately (see here).
In this blog, we will discuss how to stretch a screen the right way. It is a very simple process, we suggest that you do it after finishing the painting but it is up to you if you want to do it before starting the painting.
Step 1: Place the frame and thumbtacks on a flat surface. Join the stretcher bars in the correct way to create a frame. Connect the first two frames by sliding the corner of a longer and shorter piece into one another. Each piece of wood from our frames come with pre-cut grooves so no tools are necessary
Step 2: After joining the 4 pieces of the frame, you can adjust the frame so that each of the bars makes an angle of 90 degrees.
Step 3: After assembling a frame, lay it face down on the flat surface. Align your frame with the edge of the underlying kit. It is best to do this in bright light so that you can see the outline through the screen.
Step 4: Pull back the first long side of the canvas and thumb tack it to your frame. Try to make sure that the underlying border is lined up and that the canvas runs straight along your frame. Only put the thumb tack in half way so that you can easily.
Step 5: Continue to make sure that your frame is straight and perpendicular to with you canvas. Put the second thumbtack into the other long side of the frame.
Step 6: Double check by flipping back and forth to see how it's going. If everything is going well, go ahead and put thumb tacks into the two shorter frames
Step 7: Fold over your corners and push a thumb tack through. Remember to only go halfway with the thumb tacks so you can easily pull them out with the back of a hammer or a pair of scissors!
Step 8: Finally, fold the corners and place a push pin.
Well Done, your painting by numbers is framed!
