Picture frames load from the back or from the front. For one photograph that never changes it makes no difference. For children's drawings it decides whether the frame gets used, so it is worth two minutes.
Back-loading: the normal frame
Glass, mount, picture, backing board, then four or six metal clips you turn with a thumbnail. To change the picture you lift the frame off the wall, lay it face down on a table, turn every clip, lift out the board, swap the sheet, put it all back, re-hang, straighten. Three or four minutes with a bit of care about the glass.
What it is good at: it holds the picture dead flat, it usually comes with real glass, and it is cheap. What it costs: the whole operation needs a table and both hands, so in practice the picture changes when you move house.
Magnetic front-opening: the one we make
The front panel is held by magnets in the wooden frame. You pull the front open where it stands, the sheet lifts out or drops into the stack behind, the new one goes in, the front snaps shut. The frame never leaves the wall and nothing is unscrewed.
What it is good at: the change takes about a second, a child can do it, and there is room behind the mat for about fifty A4 sheets, so the frame is also the folder. What it costs: the front is clear acrylic rather than glass, which scratches more easily than glass and offers no UV protection; the hinge side is fixed and cannot be chosen; and nothing is clamped, so a badly curled sheet shows its curl.
Clip frames and magnetic acrylic blocks
Frameless clip frames are fast and look like nothing, which is the point and also the problem: a drawing in a clip frame does not read as framed. Two-piece magnetic acrylic blocks look excellent on a shelf, hold one sheet, take two hands, and hold no stack.
Which one for what
- One picture, forever, in the sun: back-loading frame with UV glass. Not us.
- A drawing a week, at child height, with the old ones kept: front-opening. That is the job this frame was built for.
- Enormous paintings: an A3 portfolio and a wall of washi tape.
The honest bit about ours
It is a magnet-and-elastic mechanism in a wooden frame, not joinery. One of our own buyers wrote that the hinge attachment is a bit approximate, and we left that review on the page because it is true and it does not stop the frame working. What you are buying is the one-second swap and the fifty sheets behind it.