The beginning of a new year always gives you a feeling of eagerness and renewal and 2017 is exactly that for McDonald Niklaus. This New Year is a little more special since it is our 25th! As we continue to find new creative ideas and techniques to better serve our wonderful customers we feel we have the right people in place to offer even more services. And we can’t wait to let everyone in on it!
This year we plan to grow our in-home design & consultation service, and we have some innovative ideas to continue to provide modern and inspired framing and gifts.Even though 2017 will be 25 years for McDonald Niklaus, we feel like we’re just getting started.
McDonald Niklaus is probably best known for its custom picture framing. Preserving our customers’ art and memories is one of the most important services we offer. One new direction we’re looking is contemporary floating frames. These frames are perfect for stretched canvas art. Basically, an “L” shaped frame accepts the artwork, only touching it along the back. This frame can be hung alone or paired with other frames to create a glass-less framing job with a modern twist that leaves the artwork “floating” inside the frame. We’ve even been experimenting with using industrial Velcro to attach the art to the frame to allow it to be switched out. Imagine if you had a beautiful, stylish frame to showcase a budding artist in your home. Once it’s designed and built for a certain size, it’s ready for your artist to swap out canvases as their talent grows, while still looking great!
Another project we love working on is custom shadowboxes. When we can take a collection of pictures, newspaper clippings and real, 3D objects and combine them into a work of art worthy to be passed down for generations, it really makes our day. But this kind of custom work can be time consuming and get a little pricey, possibly putting it out of reach for a quick birthday present or holiday decoration. To help with that, we’re working on some ideas for pre-designed and pre-built shadow boxes. Some of these combine three dimensional objects with meaningful thoughts to make affordable, high-class home decor or gifts. And others can be quickly customized by adding pictures, names, text and even custom objects to have a truly unique gift or keepsake available within a day or two and at a price accessible to virtually any budget. We’re super excited to bring our art to even more people!
We’re also wanting to expand our offerings in the area of complete photograph restoration and photo printing. This process involves a specialist digitally restoring the photograph and then printing it on archival paper in black& white, sepia or color.
How can accomplish all this while maintaining our current high standards? A concept we call Team-Framing. It’s a philosophy that is used from the design to the finish at McDonald Niklaus. Team-Framing starts with building a great team with diverse talents and then combining them so everyone is working at their peak talent and proficiency.
My Dad, Jim McDonald and I have worked together since the day we opened. Working with my parents has been such a blessing, but Jim retired from McDonald Niklaus last year. That was such a huge adjustment, but everyone’s really pulled together to not only keep things going, but to make the shop even better.
Lisa Schott is the head framer at McDonald Niklaus. Lisa & I have been best friends since 8th grade. She has been framing & designing for 30 plus years, 16 of which have been at McDonald Niklaus. She is very particular, which is a trait you must have to do picture framing correctly. Many times people comment on how nice the back of the picture looks. It’s that attention to detail that sets us apart.
Nancy McPeek is a designer but she feels most comfortable working on projects in our basement workshop. Nancy has worked at McDonald Niklaus for 21 years and is a true artist with the mat cutter, as well as being very talented at preparing the pieces to be framed. This includes many creative methods of attaching & displaying whatever we’re framing. It takes a special person to design, prepare and finish each picture so that we achieve exactly what the customer wants even if the customer don’t know exactly what they’re looking for.
Chanda Miller is Lisa’s framing apprentice. She has an infectious smile. She also can be found upstairs helping with the consigned gifts & merchandising. Chanda stays very busy!
Jeannine Stephens is also familiar with helping downstairs with the frames and upstairs with design & merchandising. She’s the best assistant we could ask for. She is always changing hats to help who ever needs help.
McDonald Niklaus also has a new face. Julie Swartz joined the McNik family earlier this year. Julie comes to us with a keen eye for design. She has a Diploma of Interior Design and is a licensed cosmetologist. So now you can come to McDonald Niklaus, design & frame your picture all while getting your hair cut ….no, not really. But she has a calming spirit about her that helps in the middle of the design process and her eye for color is refreshing.
Finally, Dan Shcott , Lisa’s husband, has been working as an as-needed person on installation. Dan hung more than 150 pictures in 2016. He is a retired Timken worker and can figure out how to do almost anything when it comes to home repair and installation.
But really, its always been all about the people, the incredible people that continue to support McDonald Niklaus each and every year and the amazing people who work at McDonald Niklaus that I call my family. We would not last one day without them. And together, we’re ready to tackle 2017, our 25th year and each year that comes after that.
"We love these silhouettes, Jody. The process was so easy and they ended up looking exactly like our boys. We now have them hanging in our bedroom. This was our first experience with a custom framing shop and the quality is just unbelievable. And being able to look at and tweak every detail was awesome. Thanks again, Jody." -Missy L