Dee Dee Mittelstaedt never knows what she’ll be framing next. The list of items that she’s matted and framed while she’s operated an Osseo shop called Frames to You, is vast and varied. She’s designed frames for thousands of needlepoint pieces, watercolor artwork, and hand-painted portraits. She’s created frames for fishing lures, musical instruments, English driving gloves, charm bracelets and even pacemakers or bone plates from someone’s ankle injury. She designs frames around family heirlooms like christening gowns, military patches or medals, and even Victorian braids of hair that are more than one hundred years old. She creates mementos to remember a trip, like the time she created a shadow-box type frame for china teacups and silk that someone brought back from Shanghai.
No matter how unique or bizarre the project, Mittelstaedt has a story about each one. “I love the creativity and I love forming the relationships with clients and hearing the stories and taking that and evolving that into finished product,” Mittelstaedt says. Before she starts designing a frame or mat for the customer, Mittelstaedt asks questions to learn more about the person, the object, and where it will go. “I’m more relationship oriented. I don’t rush customers into making decisions,” Mittelstaedt says. “The ones where when the customer picks it up, they have tears in their eyes and you know it wasn’t just the frame that you put on there. I feel like a part of me went with the work.”
Customers have discovered Mittelstaedt ‘s unique approach and they’ve looked past coupons and flyers from big-box stores to support her shop through two recessions. “My philosophy is that if a business only gauges its success by monetary means, they will never truly experience success,” Mittelstaedt says, who points to the cookies she gets at Christmastime and the many relationships with her customers as proof of her success.
She opened her shop in Osseo in the Surburbia Center between Furniture Manor and the Yellow Tree Theatre the week after 9-11. She had been working at a small northwest metro framing shop since 1984, where she earned her Certified Picture Framer (CPF) certification. When the shop closed, Mittelstaedt decided she was ready to go into business for herself. “I couldn’t work somewhere else and put someone else’s name on my work,” Mittelstaedt says.
Many of her former customers, like Judy Nail, followed her to the new shop. “I think she’s very fair, very innovative, and has a good eye for color,” Nail says. “She’s probably done 200 pictures for me in the last 27 years.” Nail sews counted cross stitch pieces to commemorate family events like weddings or new babies, so she wants her work to be framed by someone she trusts. “Mittelstaedt will go through all different choices and options and if you think it’s too much money, she will work with you until you find an agreement,” Nail says. “She’s very versatile.”
Mittelstaedt carries a wide variety of frame and glass options to meet her customers’ needs. She can design frames in custom–shaped sizes or in the complicated cathedral style. “How can I compete with big-box stores? I offer better products, more selection, payment flexibility including a no-interest payment plan, and more personalized service,” Mittelstaedt says. She has framed pictures for businesses, government agencies, and a few prominent politicians. In 2006, she started doing restoration work for pictures that have suffered fire or water damage. “People are always having fires and flooded basements, which are not affected by the economy,” Mittelstaedt says.
One of Mittelstaedt’s favorite customer stories is about a relationship she formed with an elderly man who was a painter. “He never married, but said he had one true love,” Mittelstaedt says. “As he neared the end of his life, he wanted to give his paintings to this woman if she was still living.” Mittelstaedt says she spent three years looking online for the woman, before she found out the woman had passed away. Mittelstaedt helped locate the woman’s children and ship the paintings to them. “They became part of his life and started calling and writing,” says Mittelstaedt, who points to this example as one of the many interesting experiences she’s had in the framing business. “I benefit more than I give. It’s not that I seek this out, but this business has become a catalyst for touching other people’s lives,” Mittelstaedt says.
“This is the legacy I’m going to leave…to be a part of my client’s lives and enrich their lives in some way.”
