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As I’ve already mentioned, we had all our interior walls painted a couple of weeks ago. What a process! Being a photographer you can only imagine how many pictures I have on my walls! Not only that, I had storage pieces, with MORE photos inside, that had to be emptied and cleaned out so the painters could even attempt to move them out of the way to paint the walls behind them.
So, aside from the obvious benefit of newly painted walls, I also have the opportunity to put things back differently. Who says they have to go back exactly how they were? Sometimes it’s nice to shake things up! Besides, I had the painters fill in all the holes so I was going to have to reinvent the wheel anyway. This is actually a fairly cheap (aside from the whole painting process) way to redecorate your house.
Sometimes folks get overwhelmed with the thought of trying to hang a collage so I’m going to share a couple of ways to make the process easier. The first way is to trace all of your pictures and wall art and cut them out. I use newspaper because it is plentiful at my house. If my art is bigger than one piece I tape them together.
Next I tape them to the wall in a pleasing pattern. Don’t be afraid to be random. Edges don’t always have to meet. Pretty much anything goes but I’d have to say that hanging a picture on the diagonal may be a challenge. If the pattern isn’t pleasing then move them around. The paper pieces help your eye see how the pictures will fill the space.
Now that you’ve decided where you want everything you can start putting nails in the wall. Don’t be scared. This is easy too. Just look at the back of each frame to figure out where the nail/hanger should go and mark the newspaper. Next put your nail right through the newspaper.
When you are done rip the paper off the wall and put your art up. And there you go!
I also wanted a collage in my office but I wanted it a bit more random so I tried a slightly different method. I took a huge piece of paper that was roughly the size of the space I wanted to hang my art. (I used some leftover backdrop paper because I had it but butcher paper would work really well too.) I put the paper on the floor and started laying out all of my pieces. Because I had so many this process took me a lot longer. Lots of shifting and moving and nixing. (Some art has been relegated to the stairs going down to the garage.) Once I was happy with the layout I outlined all the pieces and marked where the nails should go.
Next I taped the whole thing to the wall and put the nails in the desired places.
Then I popped up all my pictures and I was done. Yes, I will actually put pictures in the blank frames. They are on order!
Oh, and this does work for non-photo items too!
And there you have it. Go forth and hang!