Pleated Frame Mats

I love mats! I think they really draw the eye to a photo. They can reinforce color shemes and just seem to add a beautiful extra to any page. Because I love them so much, I usually end up matting at least half of the photos on each page. However, I get tired of my standard flat 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch mats. I have even used 'fat mats' that are 1 to 2 inches wide. Once in a while, I want a little more variety and depth on my page. Maybe you also need a new look now and then? If you love to mat your photos, use beautiful papers, and want a new technique, follow me!

Pleated frames give us just enough visual 'ooomph' to relieve the matting blahs. This is a look that can be very understated and elegant or super sporty--or anything in between. It all depends on the papers you chose to pleat. Don't worry, pleated frames are not some elaborate origami thing. We will just be folding lightweight paper back and forth at marked intervals. I will show you how step by step. So let's get going... we are going throw a little fold into our mats! I love these!

Materials:

• 1 or 2 pieces of identical lightweight patterned or plain paper -8.5x11 (do NOT use cardstock for this)
• ruler
• pencil
• your photo
• adhesive

figure 2 (materials)

Note: If you want to practice your pleating on a piece of 8.5x11 computer or typing paper before using your better scrapbooking papers-- go ahead and do so. It will allow you the freedom to make a few missfolds without getting upset with the pleating process. This is a learning process and you can do it! Soon you will be confident and be making these in less than 15 minutes!

Step One: The Starting Ratio is aproximately Photo 1 inches: Paper 3 inches

For landscape (wider) mode photos up to 4 inches tall, you can just use one sheet of paper for the mat. However, for portrait mode (taller) photos, you will need more paper-- so select two sheets that are identical and paste them together along the 8.5 inch edge. Glue neatly as we don't want our adhesives to show.

Regardless of which size photo you use, the ratio of photo height to paper height needed is about 3 inches of paper length for every inch of photo height. In other words if your photo is 4 inches tall you need almost 12 inches in length of paper (11 inches works). If your photo is 5 inches tall you need about 15 inches of paper length, and if your photo is 7 inches tall you will need about 21 inches of paper length. (This translates to two sheets of 11 inch paper glued to make one long one 22 " long)

Pick a lightweight mat paper that will not detract too much attention from your photo. Do not use cardstock or thick papers. It is too hard to use thick papers for the pleating and folding process. For each pleated mat you make, you will need a seperate length sheet of lightweight 8.5x11 patterned paper. (See length ratio above)

figure 3 (patterned paper sheet)

Step Two: Mark the Dots.

Use your ruler and your pencil and mark the back of your lightweight paper at 1/2 inch intervals along both the right and the left sides of the whole 11 inch length of your mat paper. Some people use a stylus and a ruler or their Fiskars Personal trimmer with the SCORING blade to mark the straight lines for folding pleats. Be sure you use the scoring blade and NOT the cutting blade! Ü

figure 3A

Step Three: Pleating: Make Hills and Valleys.

Now let's talk about the pleating process. When you pleat paper, it is just like pleating fabric. Don't worry, it is just a series of folds back and forth. For our pleats, you will be pleating forward 1 inch and tucking back or under the next 1/2 inch. You will then continue repeating the 1 inch pleat forward and the 1/2 tuck under back. From the top it will look like

figure 4 (hills and valleys marked)

And here is a cross section or side view below in fig 5. Basically we are folding hills and valleys on the pencil marks we made in step 1.

figure 5 (diagram cross section)

Step Four: Make the Mirror Image.

Pleat 3 pleats on both sides of your center mark. Make sure they are mirror images of each other. This means that the three on the top of center will fold downward and the three on the bottom of center will fold upward. You need the folds to mirror each other so you can tuck the photo into the fold later.

If you make the mistake of pleating all 6 pleats the SAME continuous direction, it will not allow you to tuck the photo in later at both the top and at bottom! So check the direction now. Be sure the cross section looks mirrored like in figure. 5.

figure 6 the pleated mat

Step Five: Adhesive the Back to Stabelize.

When your pleated mat looks the way you want it, adhesive the back of the pleats. Do not adhesive the front if you can help it. Double sided tape or tape runners work well for this kind of mat. I do not recommend liquid glues for this kind of mat. They take too long to dry and blobs tend to get on the front of the work.

Step Six: Add the Photo.

Once you have your pleats taped or adhesived into place from the back, you can add your photo. I placed my photo in the last pleated groove from the top of the mat and from the bottom of the mat. It just tucks into the folds. There may be some leeway on how the photo fits and slides within the pleat. You can add more adhesive to the back of your photo if you prefer it not to slide from side to side within the pleated folds.

Step Seven: The Width of the Mat: At least 1.5 inches Wider than the Photo.

Now that the photo is secured in the pleats, you can decide if you want to trim any off the sides of the mat. DON'T cut too soon or too much! Where is pleating visible on a finished mat? The sides and top of course! So, we want the outer edges (along the width) to show off that wonderful pleated effect. To insure that the album viewer can see enough of the pleating to ohhh and ahhh over it, we will make the width of the finished mat at least one inch wider than our photo.

For a 6 inch wide photo we want between 7.5 inches wide to 8.5 inches of pleated mat. Of course, if you are using 8.5 background paper, you will need to make the mat only 7.5 inches wide so it fits on the 8.5 page. Or you can set the mat sideways on the page like the butterfly layout I did in example 1 above. Either way, allow enough width beyond your photo so that people can see the pleated mat effect and your technique.

figure 7 the finished pleated mat page

Step Eight: Finish it off.

Mount the whole pleated mat and photo onto your background paper or page. Add any decorations, title, and journaling you desire. I use page protectors on pleated pages too so little fingers don't snag the pleat folds. Doesn't it look great? What a fresh look! And the more of these you do, the easier they are. Soon, you will be able to pleat a mat in about 10 minutes! All your friends will be asking you to teach them how to do it!

Use white or solid colors and the pleating looks almost like miniblinds or pleated curtains. The SPRING layout above shows how a solid color pleated mat works well with a patterned background, hand-watercolored lettering, and some 3-d cut out butterfly accents. Once you learn this technique you can experiment with different pleat marking widths as small as 1/4 inch or up to 1 or 2 inches!

A Fun Variation: Supersize It!

Pretend you are at McDonald's and SUPERSIZE your pleated mat! Once you know how to make a small pleated mat, try this.

figure 8 Mother's Day pleated page

Connect three sheets of lightweight 8.5x11 paper together along the 8.5 edges and create a super sized pleated background sheet! Take three seperate but identical 8.5x11 sheets of pretty paper and glue them together. You should let the adhesive dry completely. You will end up with a 'long' sheet of paper that now measures aproximately 8.5 inches wide x 21 or 22 inches long. Mark it with your pencil using the 1/2 inch markings. Pleat it as we did the smaller photo mat above. It should make a mat large enough to almost cover a full background piece of cardstock paper.

You can then tuck in several photos! This is a great way to showcase small pictures or school wallet photos. I recommend using a cardstock album page or background behind the pleated mat for this one as it is fairly heavy when completed. Use a strong adhesive like hermafix, photo splits, or other heavy (but not liquid) adhesive.

Have some fun! Go fold some pretty mats today! And I DON'T mean folding the laundry! I would rather fold this kind of mat ANY day! Wouldn't you? LOL