Picture Collage

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.

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. . . .

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.

 

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

 

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!

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!

 

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!

 

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

 

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!

 

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. . . .

And 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!