Two things prompted me to get my butt in gear to do the second part of transforming my living room. 1-I bought the rights to all of our gorgeous wedding photos and 2-there was a giant bare wall staring at me every time I walked in.
The first step was to find a bunch of frames that were similar. No problem there...for some reason I ALWAYS have extra frames hanging around! I don't buy them very often either, so I can't figure out why this happens... ah well, it serves me well in the end! I did have to buy one frame though, our photographer gave us a few prints, which included one 11x14 that I really wanted to put on the wall. I found a clearance frame at AC Moore (in the clearance section in the way back corner of the store--my fav place to shop!) Plus a poster frame (for another project) BOTH for a total of UNDER $20!! Yay!
Now to choose pictures. This part was harder for me, there were SO MANY great ones from that day!! In the end, I narrowed it down to pictures to fill 6 frames of various sizes. I included a few from our engagement session too, since I already had those printed.
Alright. After I washed all the glass and dusted all the frames (like I said, lots of frames just hanging around...they tend to get dirty when they're just sitting in the basement, ick!) then I had to decide how I wanted to arrange them on the wall. I traced each frame onto some brown paper I had from the packaging of stuff I bought online. Then I payed around with different arrangements until I found one I thought I liked.
I taped them up on the wall to see if it worked as well there as it did on the floor.
Now I got to use my level! I'm such a DIY/Crafty nerd, I was so excited when my husband brought it home for me!!! Nerdy craft excitement aside, I started hanging up frames. As I got them on the wall I moved the ones on the end around a little bit.
It actually stayed like this for about 2 weeks, the frame I originally wanted to use for that last spot ended up being very difficult to find pictures for. Then I found a frame someone had given me (That must be why I have so many frames!!) that fit perfectly in the spot I had open.
So then I had to adjust the rest of the frames a little more. I didn't like the way all the matted pictures were on one side and the not matted ones were on the other. It was like I was segregating my frames or something...so I changed it, and ended up with this:
I tried really hard to take a picture without the glare, but I have a BIG picture window directly across from this wall and I was too impatient to wait until later to use more indirect light.
My favorite part of this is that when people come over, they stand in front of the wall and actually take time to look at all the pictures. I love pictures!
