Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Living Room Photo Collage



I have been on a mission to get my living room decorated.  I love the look of photo collages hanging up, with mismatched frames. 

I also knew I wanted to tie in more blue, green, and white to brighten up the newly painted beige walls and the brown couches. 

So, I took a quick trip to the craft store where I found some pretty scrapbook paper, and decided I liked having the letter "M" around as well, since that's what our last name starts with. 

I shopped the house for frames that weren't really being used, and sat down on the floor to play around with layouts that might work.  I settled on one and then got to work painting my frames.  I did most of them with a quick coat of white spray paint.  They are NOT perfect, as I was going for a bit of a shabby chic look. 


I decided to paint the glass in the biggest frame with chalkboard paint, as well as the glass in a smaller frame.  I was thinking of doing the "M" Family, and "Est. 2004."  Love the way it turned out!

So, I knew it was going to be tricky to hang up all of these frames without poking a million holes in my newly painted wall...and I really didn't want that.  So, Pinterest to the rescue!  Found a great tip that was originally posted at Blissfully Domestic

I took an old roll of wrapping paper and traced everything!


I made sure to write which frames I had traced since some are similar sizes and I wanted them if specific places.  I poked in the holes where the nails would go on the frames too.


Then I got to work putting the traced papers up on my wall with some easily removable tape. I put all the nails in right through the paper once I got everything where I wanted it, then just pulled the paper off the wall right before I put the frame up! So easy! 

My helper is pretty cute, huh? :o)


Almost done!  My last touch was to change out all of the pictures in the frames to sepia toned photos of our family!  I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! 


And there is my "finished" (when is it ever REALLY finished?!) product! 

Also, who knew how hard it would be to find white chalk?!  I looked all over, Walmart, drugstores, grocery stores...I found plenty of colored chalk, but no boxes of just white chalk.  I finally found a box of sidewalk chalk that had a stick of white in it (which I really like, actually, because the tip is "sharpened" like a crayon, haha, really nice to use!).  I want to get some chalk markers, but I was too impatient to wait for them if I ordered them from Amazon or somewhere else online.





2 comments:

  1. Oh wow, that turned out great, and great tips, too. I don't even have any pictures on my walls because I can't hold them up and look to make sure they look right at the same time. The paper idea is great.

    Really crazy about the white chalk. Someone was telling me yesterday they couldn't find safety pins at the stores. How strange!

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    1. Thanks! I thought the paper trick worked so well! I could move it around and stand back to see how I liked it, move it around again, haha. :o)

      Crazy about the safety pins! I usually find them in the laundry basket or sewing machine areas at Walmart or Target, but it's been at least a year since I've bought any.

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