Friday, December 10th, 2010
Simply put, a Rubber Band Frame is a giant rubber band that wraps around the edge of a painted canvas to make the sides more attractive. This framing technique costs about $3.00 per unit, and is a faster/easier alternative to painting the edge of a canvas like many artists currently do. The problem with painting canvas edges is that in most cases it prevents art collectors from framing their paintings since they don't want to damage the painted edge.
Here's what Rubber Band Frames look like: You may see my prototype here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFvyC1UFCjg
Imagine a painted portrait of a blue eyed girl with ragged blond hair. The artist who painted this portrait, Georgia, finished painting it 2 weeks ago and she wants to sell it at a coffee shop in town. Right now there are only two options are available for Georgia - she can either frame her painting with a traditional frame, which will probably cost her at $40+. Or she can display the painting without a frame, and maybe paint the edges. The problems she's facing are that she can't afford a traditional frame, and also she would like to give the buyer the option of framing her painting with a traditional frame at some point.
Rubber Band Frames are an invention that I thought of in mid-September, 2010. Rubber Band Frames wrap around the thin edge of a gallery canvas so that they cover up the edge, but not the face of the painting. Once the Rubber Band Frame is on the canvas, the edges will look like they were painted black. These frames are light-weight, durable, adjustable, compact, and can be used to catapult things into the neighbor's yard. But seriously, please don't catapult anything into your neighbors yard, unless you want disgruntled neighbors :)
Currently, there is nothing on the market like my Rubber Band Frames invention. This invention is such a good and useful idea that I'm surprised it's not already out there yet, but for some reason it isn't. Maybe nobody else thought of it before?? How in the world hasn't anybody else thought of this before?? Well there's always a first for everything I guess :)
The Rubber Band Frame idea originated in early September when I had the idea of using black electrical tape to frame gallery canvases - basically to cover up the edge of the canvas instead of painting the edge like a lot of artists do. The problem with painting the edge of a canvas is that doing so prevents collectors from framing those paintings. When I told my friend about the electrical tape idea, she replied, "what if someone else takes the tape off so that they can frame the canvas? The tape will leave goop behind!", that's when I got the idea to use giant rubber bands as frames, because rubber bands won't leave any goop behind when they are removed. First I googled "Rubber Band Frames Artist Canvas", and nothing popped up like my invention. I was sure I'd find something out there like it, but the further I dug around the more I realized that it was going to be a hard task to even find myself a giant rubber band to test out my idea with. During my researching I found that traditionally, rubber bands are used as office supplies, (like, duh!), and that there really aren't a whole lot of applications for the niche market of giant rubber bands. Right now, giant rubber bands have been used by homeowners to catapult things into their neighbors yards (it's online, so it must be true!), and have been used for exercising by athletes and people doing sports therapy, and have been used in the shipping biz to hold stacks of boxes together on pallets, but those were the only three uses I found for giant rubber bands during my searching. And, btw, when I say "giant", I mean that these rubber bands are about 1 1/2" wide by about 9 feet long when not in a band.
Anyway, I stumbled upon a tutorial about how to make a giant rubber band out of a bicycle tire innertube and this tutorial inspired me to make my own prototype. Originally I was hoping to find an affordable giant rubber band on the internet for maybe $5 or something like that, but they just aren't available right now for that price, and the ones that are available are blue or green and are too small. That's why I ended up using the tutorial's method to make my own giant rubber band out of a an old bicycle tire innertube which the kind folks over at the Bike Line gave me. I made my first video for the invention the same day I made my prototype. That first video is dated September 16th, and is the one with the red canvas if you Google search "Rubber Band Frame". Here is that original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bPlBN8bX1U
Right now I'm on a quest to share my idea with people in the biz and to pitch them my idea, because as an artist myself, I would personally love to be able to use Rubber Band Frames with my own art. In other words, I am an inventor, but when it comes to buying things I think like a consumer. I love a good deal when I can find one - a lot of artists are like me... we are thrifty peeps! I see unframed paintings at local coffee shops and sometimes even at galleries, and I can empathize with those artists, because hey, frames are freaking expensive! But at the same time, I think paintings look best when they are framed or mounted. Rubber bands in general are fun to use, and they feel soft and velvety, which appeals to most people. it's a lot easier for an artist to wrap a rubber band around the edge of a painting than to paint the edge. Painting the edges of canvases takes time and skill, and has a nice effect at times. But, wouldn't it be much less expensive and easier to leave the edge of a painting unpainted? Sometimes using an expensive custom frame is appropriate, but it doesn't pay to do it if the paintings sell for under $100, or if an artist is prolific and has to frame a lot of paintings.
I came up with a goal this week, which I'm gonna share with you now. My goal is to get this idea into the hands of the right people... i.e. people who like the idea and who have the power to bring it to market. Even though my original idea was to use black rubber bands, I could see this idea tweaked a bit so that another type of rubber is used such as silicon or latex maybe, or even stretchy cloth fabric would be a possibility. I just hope that whatever rubber or plastic is used, that the shelf price is affordable and that the Rubber Band Frames look nice. Please share this idea with people in the biz and help me get the word out about it. I just think this is the coolest invention I've had yet, and I'm super excited about it :) Thanks for your help!
The two You Tube links I posted earlier are the only videos I have online right now for the invention. The reason two videos is that I mispelled the name of the invention in the first video... lol! I was so excited and in such a hurry to make a video that I misspelled "Stretchy Picture Frames" as "Stetchy Picture Frames", and I didn't even notice the mistake until last week... sheesh!
Okay, I'll do some more blogging over the weekend...
ttys,
Daniel Pevar
West Chester, PA
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updated 12/13/2010
I just wanted to make a quick note today that I did a little revising on my previous entry, and that I'll probably post some new material later. My plan for now is to keep adding to this dated blog, because I want new readers to be able to read about my invention without having to dig through old entries to learn the background. So, I'm just going to add any new content into this first blog entry for now. -D.
