During a Durham customer’s travels, he came across a vintage suitcase, with the travel cover included. While the suitcase itself was in good condition, the travel cover had seen better days. Knowing he wanted to use the suitcase as a talking piece in his living room, he wasn’t sure what to do with the worn travel cover. Since we had worked on other unique projects in the past we accepted the challenge to see what we could come up with to display both the suitcase and stickers from the travel cover.

Without a real clear vision of how he wanted the framed piece look, I asked a few design questions, and used our Visualization software to help him see how the final piece would look. The software takes a photo of the artwork, any mats and frames then produces a visual of how the finished product will look to determine if the mats and frames are a good fit for the piece. It allows you to see the final piece prior to making a financial commitment when you are unsure of the mat and frame selections.

Wanting the piece to keeps its vintage look we decided to try to keep the travel stickers in their current state and cut out the sections where the stickers had peeled away from the travel cover. Based on the mock ups he settled on a fabric mat that was similar in color and texture to the travel case itself. In keeping with other furniture in the room, he selected a simple mahogany frame, which would not distract from the stickers but was also deep enough to accommodate the artwork and spacers to keep the stickers from touching the glass.

Having an ideal size and space in mind the travel stickers were arranged close together and based on their size and shape to create balance. The result was a nice and unique framed complimentary piece to go along with his suitcase.