I'm a do-it-yourself guy. When something needs to be done, I review the price versus the time, and decide whether or not it is cost-effective for me to do the job myself.

Through the years, as the number and variety of my daily obligations has increased, changing the oil in the car has dropped off the Honey-Do list to the Honey -- Will you drop this off at the mechanic's? List. Honey's actually happier with the second option since the car get lubed on time for a change.

In my initial painting years, building my own frames for the paintings was on the Do-It-Myself list, especially as those first years involved more cost outlay than income input. After all, I built our house and furniture through the years -- whipping out a frame for each painting should be a breeze. So I reasoned.

A logger friend with private property had Tamarack and White Fir, both of which build into strong, beautiful frames. Trial and error led me to view gold-leafed frames as the most versatile, the gold working with just about everything in my color palette to enhance the final painting.

What I didn't take into account was that it takes as much time to make a frame as it does to paint a painting,  and for each frame I built, I wasn't creating a painting.

This seems obvious in hindsight, but it took the collective wisdom of the staff at one of our galleries to convince me. "Paint," they told me.  "Paint."

So, I painted and researched frame companies, eventually deciding upon Web Picture Frames out of Eugene, OR as providing a consistently excellent product for a reasonable price, in addition to packaging the box so well that a tank running over it would damage the tank before doing anything to the frames inside.

Now, every time I finish a painting, I don't have this sinking feeling that, before the work heads out to the gallery, I have a significant number of hours ahead of me of measuring, cutting, sanding, coating, re coating, and gold leafing. I slip the painting into the frame, hang the work in its temporary abode on the studio wall, and reach for another canvas.

When my mind needs a break from the intense concentration of painting, I have found a new, art-related hobby -- building the cardboard box in which to ship the work.

More on this in the next blog.