What to Do With Your Convention Art: When You Don’t Want to Frame

Hi, I’m Sean, and I have a problem: I buy way too much fan art at conventions. I come home from shows with poster tubes and flat art guards stuffed with prints.

However, I suspect I’m not the only one with this problem, and, as we enter summer convention season, I wanted to discuss how to safely archive your convention art without using frames.

When I say “archive,” I mean that the techniques here are all:

1. Safe — we’ll be using acid free materials and special adhesives that will not discolor or degrade the art.
2. Reversible — any adhesives we use can be safely removed from the artwork without damage.

This means these techniques may be a bit overboard for some people-we’ll be using water-activated tapes and using framing techniques to mount smaller art to cardstock to keep it safe. I acknowledge this isn’t for everyone, and I have notes in this guide of steps you can skip or bypass to sacrifice archival quality for speed. However, I would much rather it be my decision to get rid of some art in the future (because why did I buy that print of that character), rather than nature’s (because the art is yellowing).

If you’re working with large posters (anything larger than standard letter paper (8.5″ x 11″)), you’re going to want to use a dedicated art binder. You can grab these at most art stores.