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Monday, April 19, 2010

Picture Collage

metamorphosis monday

living room wall, before

So, there’s this wall in my living room. It’s going to be one of two ‘usable’ walls because of windows and furniture, etc. I love having lots of pictures on my walls and I finally decided that I would just fill this whole space up with framed photos of the kids.

outline

So I used some string and tape and measured the space and repeated it on my floor. Then I rounded up all my picture frames. . . .

outline, filled

They totally don’t go together. I have a thing for picture frames, (geez, I have a ‘thing’ for lots of things, don’t I?!) and I pick them up when I find them on sale. Some are gold, some are silver, some are cream rubbed with gold, wood, painted wood, rhinestoned, bejeweled, you get the idea. I did use to have most of them displayed on my bookshelves in our last house. But they really don’t go together. I read something once about unifying a collection of things by painting them all the same color. That seemed like a good idea here! I’ve been seeing Rustoleum’s Heirloom White used all over blogland so I trusted other bloggers and picked some up. Now I know why everyone is using it, It. Is. Awesome. It’s a great creamy color and it covers SO MUCH BETTER than the other cream spray paint I had lying around.

So, I set everything up and got my handy dandy paint guy (hubby) to paint them for me. I did try to help, but Jay suggested I leave it to him. Something about drips. Hmph.

 picture frames

I didn’t get a ‘during’ pic, but here are some of my frames now. 

 

ethnic frame

This frame turned out so well! It used to have a sort of funky/ethnic feel. It had turquoise and red and orange and yellow stones in a dark background. Totally not my thing at all, but I always liked it. Now I love it. It looks so unusual!

rhinestone frame

This one had sort of a faux wood finish and those dots were topaz colored stones. Not a very good color choice, actually. But the painted rhinestones give it a pretty cool texture now!

 1

That large frame was really pretty. It was already cream and had a faded gold finish on the raised parts. It was hard for me to decide to paint it, but it really did turn out well! I’m really glad I did it!

 2

More of the frames. You can see how they are all different textures and styles.

 3

I love that one of Reese! That frame was hard for me to decide to paint too. It was really pretty. But again, I like it better this way too!

  living room wall, after

Ta da!!! (Please excuse the blue ‘devil box’, it’s on my list of things to do and I needed somewhere to put the satellite box. Oh, please excuse that too.) Looking at this picture, I can see I need to go straighten a couple of the frames with a level! I used a sticky mount adhesive on all of them to help keep them in place. Not all of the frames are meant to be hung. I affixed picture wire on them, but they still have that thingamajig that holds them up on a surface. That stupid thingamajig makes them not hang perfectly. But that foam adhesive helps balance them out and keep little hands from messing with them. I decided to use sepia photos. Some of those pictures have really, really great color, but it was just too chaotic looking. The big one of Amelia is a gorgeous blue and green and the one of  Reese shows the breathtaking colors of fallen leaves in New England. And there’s quite a bit of pink in most of the other pics. So I again went with a unifying color and printed them all in sepia.

One more time. . . .

living room wall, before

And after. . . .  

living room wall, after

Thanks for stopping by! I’m linking up with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Metamorphosis Monday! Can’t wait to see all the other great transformations!

8 comments:

~ April ~ EnchantedDandelions said...

Wow!!! That's so gorgeous! Love it!

Carol said...

That was a big project! I like how you mapped out the area on the floor. That was clever. I love the frames all the same color. Hmm, I think I love the pictures more than the frames.

Judy @ In His Grip said...

You did a great job. It looks great!

Nichole@40daysof said...

Great job! That looks like it took a lot of patience. Thanks for showing how you did it. Definitely information I can use.

http://40daysof.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/new-art-and-guidelines-for-picture-hanging/

Rebecca said...

That turned out fantastic! I'm definitely gonna have to copy you now! And you can't do anything about it cause you moved all the way across the country. ;)

My Slice of Heaven said...

Wow, what a difference! Nice work.

Kammy said...

Hello ~
You did a fantastic job - looks like it came out of a magazine !
Sorry, it took so long for me to come visit ( I work full time and it is hard to visit everyone in a timely manner) Anyway, you asked about ORB - it stands for Oil Rubbed Bronze - spray paint by Krylon - I can only find it at Walmart..Hope this helps :o)
Thanks for visiting !
Hugs ~ Kammy

Jen said...

This looks terrific. For some reason my google reader hasn't been letting me know when you have new post. So sorry I haven't been commenting more. you did a great job on this project!