What Is A Floating Mat?

In the design process we were talking about matting and there's another option we can do with matting which is called “floating”. We use floating mainly when what we want to see goes all the way to the edge of the paper. So either the artist has signed in the white border or the actual image goes all the way to the edge and we don't want to lose it (by covering it with a mat that has a hole cut out of it). Sometimes artists use a paper that has a rough edge, and that rough edge is called a deckled edge and that can be really nice if it's enhanced. So instead of the mat going on top of the edge of the artwork we're going to put the artwork on top of the mat, and this gives us this really cool effect where it looks like magic sitting on the mat and we get to see all of the artwork.