Laminated art pieces last longer: There is no doubt that a laminated piece of artwork can withstand the test of time by adding countless years to your favorite pieces. Proper laminating can prevent fading from sunlight or other bright lights, destructive Ultra-Violet rays, fingerprints and smudging from simple handling, pollutants, and even the vapors from smoke, cleaning solutions, and other harmful atmospheric elements. If you truly care about a piece of artwork, and choose not to frame it, the only real way to ensure its safety is to laminate the prized image.

Laminating is cheaper: Sometimes the sheer cost of framing a favorite piece of artwork to hang on your wall can be very daunting. So why not simply laminate it for less than half of the cost? Laminating your favorite works will allow you to have more prized works hanging protected on your wall than only one or two framed pieces for the same cost. Sometimes framing can not only be expensive, but it can take a lot longer to frame than to simply laminate and trim, especially if you have to send your artwork off to some distant place to be professionally framed, which, in most cases, takes days, if not weeks, to get back to you. Instead, why not settle for laminating your works and beautify your home in a few short hours instead?

Laminating provides a solid, professional look to your portfolio: If you are an artist who is looking for a gallery show, a prospective job, or a more professional portfolio, laminating can help you achieve that professional look and feel needed to land you the floor space or that dream job. A portfolio is the single most important tool for any artist in any situation, and having yours laminated shows that you care about your artwork as much as you do about how you present yourself. Set yourself above the rest with the quick, cheap, and easy style of laminating.

These are only a few of the wide variety of reasons an artist should choose to laminate their artwork. Two things to keep in mind: first, be sure to use cold lamination when working with precious artwork as heat laminators can damage if not utterly destroy your prized works. Second, lamination is permanent as it literally sticks to both sides of the finalized piece of art. So, next time you are thinking about spending a few hundred or thousand dollars to frame your artwork, look into lamination.

Estate planning is what a person engages in while they are making out a last will and testament. They determine what will happen to all of the assets they own and who will benefit from such assets. Therefore, estate planning is extremely important, if you want to leave specific individuals your assets, like your home, your vehicle(s) or any form of money, you will need to write a legal will and indicate your selected beneficiaries. There are several steps you will need to take in order to cover all the bases.

Next, you will need to speak to a lawyer that handles wills and estates about writing up your will. A lawyer can assist you with all the legalities and can advise you of what you can and cannot do in terms of planning the distribution of your assets. You can find a lawyer easily enough using your telephone directory or you can find one on the Internet.

Illinois estate planning attorney, Christopher D. Dwyer, operates one of the premier estate law firms in Chicago area as an asset protection attorney with a concentration on business counseling, wills, trusts and probate. Chris now owns and runs his own law firm and is dedicated to providing personal service with the same degree of expertise that he employed at the large Chicago estate law firms. He is personally invested in his clients’ success and provides a hands-on approach to each client’s legal needs. He understands both the legal and personal aspects of your business affairs. His clients come from all walks of life, throughout the state of Illinois, across the nation and around the world.

After you have located a lawyer, you will sit down with the attorney and go through any documentation pertaining to your assets. At this time, you may also want to consider the possibility of creating a Power of Attorney, a statement giving control of your assets to your pre-selected individual if something should happen to you while you are still living and you, for whatever reason, cannot speak for yourself. Also, you may want to consider creating a Health Care Proxy, letting whoever is in charge when you can’t be, decide the type of hospital treatment you would prefer.

Finally, during the process of creating a will, you may want to establish one or more trust funds, referred to as “discretionary trusts” to those individuals that may be too young to manage any assets you give them in the event of your death.