Wednesday, January 19, 2011

DIY Wednesday: Photo Wall Collage

We are still moving into our new house. Mostly just doing the decorating bit now. I had tons of silver picture frames left from my old house and I decided to create a collage on the wall.

The "Before" Wall















The wall is pretty blah. I think I might paint the wall once I get the house completely unpacked.

Step One: Set Out Frames















Now. If you read any magazine, they give the great idea of tracing the frames onto kraft paper and putting that on the wall. The probably would work, but I didn't want to go through the trouble of cutting it, so I did this process. I first laid out the collage. The center frame is going be centered at 60 inches up from the floor and in the middle of the wall. I then measured each frame from the center frame and based the height of the frame based off the center frame. I ended up with a piece of paper that looked like this:















Okay. So is this really easier than just grabbing some kraft paper? eh. I don't know. Probably not but it's cheaper when you're doing such a large collage.

Step Two: Get Help

I had a special supervisor to my project.
















Step Three: Prepare Frames.

I probably could have done this before laying out my college and measure (maybe easier if I were to do it first) but I was waiting for my huge Shutterfly order of all types of new prints. So when you get your pictures, go somewhere clean to put the pictures in the frames. (In my case, that meant trying to find a dog hair free zone.....not easy) Clean the glass both inside and out with glass cleaner. Let glass dry completely before touching a photo.

Now, if you're like me, you will be hunting down every frame in the house for this project. Many of my frames just had stands, they didn't have anything to hang them from. Well, that's easy to fix! Go to your local retailer and grab some metal picture hanging brackets. They can be found by the frames or in the hardware department. To attach the bracket, you won't be able to use the nails (unless you have a wooden frame of course). I grabbed my hot glue gun. I measured the center 1 inch down from the top of the frame. Then I hot glued that sucker right on the back of the frame. Worked great!







Don't have the sawtooth hangers? Don't want to spend the extra money (they are actually like 2$ for a pack)? You can also use a little piece of ribbon!



Thankfully I had a supervisor to keep me in line and on task



Step Four: Measure and Drill

I used drywall screws with my wall. I first measured out the location of each hole...leave a pencil mark and drill that baby in. I slowly put frames on the screws to see how things were going.















Finished! Admire your beautiful work!









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