Where have I been?

I really let time pass - it's been 3 months since my last post! What have I been up to? Well, I still haven't finished the coke cooler painting, but it's close. In the meantime, I painted a small commissioned piece for a family member, designed new frames for the paintings, and traveled to Jamaica for a honeymoon.

I'd like to share the small commissioned painting, but since it's a surprise, I don't want to ruin it. 

On to the new frames. I'm tiring of my regular frames of the last 6 years. Also, I've had trouble reinforcing the mitered corners since the frame material is very thin. This results in some of the glued mitered corners cracking and coming apart. To fix this, I decided to ditch the old framing method and start using contemporary floating frames with spline reinforced corners. You can see how I did this in the pictures below with a spline jig I built to use on the router table. I also changed material from red oak to walnut.  These frames definitely take more time to build, but I do like how the natural walnut looks with the paintings.     

Lastly, Kate and I took our honeymoon in Jamaica on the last week of April. We had a good time at the resort where we stayed, but the bus ride to and from the Airport does make me grateful to live in the US. It's nice to be back home. We did take some photos, but neither of us got shutter happy. The last two photos are from the flight home. You can see that little assembly of tall buildings is all of downtown Chicago.