UPDATE, 1 year later: I originally purchased these frames for HALF the price they are now asking, and rated them 4 stars based on that value. For the current going price, I have removed 2 stars, as I believe you can do better for that cost. ORIGINAL REVIEW: For Xmas, I decided to make each of my family members watercolor paintings or drawings of family pictures with sentimental meaning to them. I used 11"x 14" watercolor paper and, since I made several, needed some economical, simple frames with included matting to frame the prints. These worked great and the prints looked stunning! The mattes themselves are thick and high quality. The matte openings are roughly 10.5" x 13.5", so your prints will be easy to mount without covering too much of the actual picture you are mounting. I used acid-free clear archiving tape and it worked perfectly. FYI: Don't expect these to be "par exemplar" quality for this price. There are a few tiny problems (although for the cost, they are very easy to overlook): 1) A couple of the mattes were either slightly blemished or had slightly bent tips on a corner or two. I used an artist's eraser to easily remove the blemishes, and the bent corner tips aren't at all noticeable once I glued the mounting boards at all 4 corners (see 3rd picture, as well as explanation below). 2) The backings are clipped in with the kind of inexpensive, thin metal brackets that break easily if they are bent too often. These brackets are always attached to the frame using a bracket gun and, in the case of THESE frames, they were poorly spaced and attached on each frame's short side (again, see the 3rd picture). As a result, once I mounted each picture, I noticed that each frame had corners that didn't lie flush, and this resulted in the matting and print looking warped in a corner or two on each. To fix them, I just used HIGH TEMP hot glue, via a glue gun, to the corners (low temp dries too quickly and won't attach to the frame as well). I inserted a bit of the glue into each corner's edges, then had to apply pressure to each in order to compress the corners down, and continued to hold each in place until the glue dried completely (again, see 3rd picture). This solved the issue, but...if someone ever wants to unmount the picture (or, in my case, notices random flecks of black paint from the frame attached to the print, matting, or glass once it's mounted), it will be a pain to fix because you'll have to use a hair dryer to remelt and remove all the glue so you can unmount the picture. **UPDATE: I did this on one picture. Not as hard as I expected. I used an old steak knife to pry the glue out and it came out easily.** 3) You DEFINITELY have to clean the glass on both sides. Although the frames are shipped VERY well protected and secure, they will still have tiny shards of glass from the glass panel edges, and possibly little flecks of black paint from the frame, attached to the glass due to static. 4) I also recommend using a damp, stiff lint-free cloth (a chamois would be perfect) to clean the interior sides of the frames themselves. DON'T use paper towels, because one or two of the interior edges of the frames are kind of rough and, as I unfortunately discovered, the paper towels will catch on them, rip, and be difficult to remove. This needs to be done because, as I mentioned earlier, I noticed on the first picture I framed that, despite cleaning the glass well, there were numerous flecks of black paint from the frame itself stuck to the print, matting, and glass once it was mounted, and thus, must have flaked off the actual edges of the frame itself during the process of mounting. 4) The glass edges are rough cut (like almost every cheaper or mid-cost frame I've ever purchased) and tiny flecks will come off once it's removed from the frame (another reason to wipe down both the glass and the frame itself). I made the mistake of mounting these on my bed spread and, once done, discovered hundreds of tiny slivers and flecks of glass all over its surface once the sunlight hit the area. I had to vacuum it all up because a few of the flecks were large enough to become embedded in either someone's skin or the paws of my dogs. 5) On one or two of the frames, one or two of the corners had connecting brackets (i.e.: the things that hold the frame's sides together at the corners) that were not inserted optimally, so the corners are either not 100% flush to each other, or they seem a tiny bit loose. Only happened with a couple of corners out of the 20 between the five frames, though, and can be fixed pretty easily with hot glue. To fix them, I just carefully added high melt hot glue to those corners from the back and adjusted them slightly to get them in place before the glue dried. These things aside, these frames are awesome for their cost. I usually do most of this prep even with the more expensive frames I buy, so aside from having to hot glue a frame or two's loose corner brackets, plus all four of each frame's corners to secure the mounting boards' back corners to the frames themselves, it was not any prep I wouldn't already be doing. The biggest thing that sucks about this set, in truth, is that you can only buy 1 set. I purchased one set with my personal account, then went back the next week to purchase another and it wouldn't let me because i'd already purchased the max amount (1 set). I had to go purchase the second set through my business account.
