I procrastinated and put off hanging pictures on my family room wall for the longest time. I didn't want to put holes in my freshly painted wall only to twist my nose at the result of my efforts. I knew it would be an all day affair if I was really going to do it right. Here I'll share with you how I went about it.
I had a number of picture frames and mattes that I collected over the years. My first step was to gather and clean the frames and glass. Next, I went through my drawings, paintings, embroidery, postcards I purchased at museum shops and wood cuts a dear friends father made decades ago.
The frames were of various styles, materials, colors and sizes. This wasn't a problem for me as I intentionally decorate in an eclectic style. My first step was to take the frames and lay them in an arrangement on the floor. I was fortunate to have enough floor space in the same room I was going to hang the frames, and measured and marked the floor so it was a representation of the wall the area. As I placed each frame on the floor, I paid attention to the visual weight each frame carried. I didn't want similar or identical frames concentrated in one area. Choosing the pieces of art and mattes was approached in the same way as the frames.
Balancing matte colors and the art that it was surrounding was important. Each framed piece needed to be balanced within the overall grouping. (I recommend laying the pieces on the floor on top of the frames to see how you like it--before enclosing them in the frame.) Once I was happy with the arrangement, I completed framing each piece and returned it to its spot on the floor. I gave the arrangement another look and found that I could improve the balance by moving a few pieces around.
Getting the frames properly hung was made easy by use of paper templates. I had a piece of paper for each frame. If you buy or have new frames, keep the advertising paper that usually accompanies most finished frames. Otherwise, use butcher paper, newsprint (not newspaper as it may transfer ink to your wall), printer paper etc. I taped these to the wall with masking tape until the arrangement was to my satisfaction. If you look below at the images, you will see that I placed my frames in a series of five columns. To get these on center, I folded each template in half to create a center crease. I lined up the crease with a yard long stick that also contained levels. This made it very easy to line the creases up and know the are on a straight vertical line.
I hung the pictures one vertical row at a time. I measured where the hanging hardware was on the back of the frame and then marked that place on my template and nailed the hardware through the template. That was a bit tedious. Next time, I will try marking the hardware locations on the template when they are still on the floor, before I tape them to the wall.
