[Illustration: How the binding strips are trimmed]
One of the lessons of experience in this work is that it is well to take great pains in centring the binding strips accurately before pasting them on, as they do not stick well if the attempt is made to correct a mistake by removing the binding and pasting it on again. The more elaborate passe-partouts, requiring mats, borders, and double bindings, are scarcely more difficult than the simple example just described, though they will require more time. It is well to begin with the easier problems. When borders and double bindings are used the narrow passe-partout strips are pasted on first, with proper care to cut the mitres correctly and to centre the strips accurately before pasting them down upon the glass. The edges are bound last. This partly covers the brighter-coloured strips previously pasted along the edge of the glass, and leaves a narrow line of colour exposed as a border just inside the binding.
[Illustration: A correct method of hanging pictures]
_How to Hang Pictures._--If wire be used for hanging pictures, it should be as small and inconspicuous as possible. In place of the braided steel wire, which may be needed for large pictures, a single brass or copper wire is much to be preferred for those of lighter weight. In all cases where the wire shows it should appear as two vertical lines against the wall and not as a single wire bent over a single hook in the form of an inverted V, so commonly seen and so manifestly failing to conform with any lines of a room. Levelling the picture may be easily managed by using only one wire, making it continuous through the screw eyes on the back of the picture. These screw eyes should be placed near the top of the frame--about one sixth the whole vertical width of the picture from the top--so that the picture may hang nearly flat against the wall. Whenever possible, however, pictures should be hung without showing the wire at all. This may be easily managed without seriously marring the finish of some rooms by driving two fine finishing nails in the part of the lower wall which is to come directly behind the top of the picture, allowing them to project about 1/2 of an inch and bending them up a little with a pair of pliers so that the wires will not slip off. Choice, small pictures may be hung in this way on fine upholstery tacks. It is often possible, when the wire must be exposed, to stop it just below the dado cap and thus avoid showing the wire over the frieze. Whenever it is necessary, as it often is, to suspend wires by means of the so-called picture hooks from a picture moulding or cornice strip placed above the frieze, some attention should be paid to the colour of these hooks. Bright metal hooks showing over a delicately coloured moulding are in bad taste. Some people prefer to use the inverted V suspension in order to reduce the number of these picture hooks. But it is far better to retain the straight, fine, and nearly invisible wires and colour the hooks to make them less conspicuous.