Friday 23 January 2009

The art of recycling: frame corner protectors


If you have some plumbing done in your house and have some polyethylene pipe insulation left (see photograph), you can recycle them for your art.


These tubes are slit to go around copper pipes and you can use them to protect frames during transport. This solution works well for small mouldings used for watercolours or pastel works. You just need to open-up the tube with your fingers and slide it over the moulding.






I tried to make a “V” shape cut in the pipe insulation material to see if it would allow the material to bend around the corner. I am happy to report that it works. The only recommendation I would make if you do that is to let a good length of pipe insulator on each side (otherwise, the material will spring back and get off the frame corner)






I did a quick search on the web and found some of these round pipes insulators for £1.84 for a pack of 5 (totalling 5 metres). This material is fairly cheap and may be a viable solution to protect these fragile frames’ corners between your studio and your next exhibition.



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3 comments:

mondotrasho said...

Just be careful using this material as some of it has an adhesive strip to join the insulation together when it is fit over a pipe. I "almost" created a big problem on a piece when the adhesive material stuck to the painting, luckily it was the back of the work and not on the front.

Benoit Philippe said...

Very good comment. I did not know some of them had an adhesive part. Benoit

Packaging Supplier said...

Protect your frames from being scratched using our Frame Corner Protectors. This uniquely designed corrugated corner adjusts to fit frames from 3/4 to 1 7/8 thick.