Amerige Avenue: Family and Friends Photo Project

For several months I have been wanting to do a photo collage above the couch in our living room. I have a lot of wonderful photos of my family and friends I wanted to enjoy looking at daily (it makes me so happy to see the people I love every day!) Thanks to my friend Allyson, who kindly donated black frames in various sizes, I was able to complete the project fairly quickly. In case anyone wants to duplicate this in their own home, I will give step-by-step details of what I did, and what I think could be done better a second time around.

Here is the photo wall, but be sure to scroll down to the very bottom of the post to see the finished product:

So, the first step is to start with frames you love. They can be uniform or various colors and shapes, but either way you will need to have different sizes. I am of the personal opinion that if you have a very symmetrical design style in your home then this project would be perfect to mix it up a bit with different color frames and styles. I went for a more symmetrical look because a) it looks good, b) the frames were free, and c) my design style (specifically my living room) is not very symmetrical.

Here are some not-so-symmetrical ideas from How to arrange frames on wall and Apartment Therapy.

If the frames have a stand on the back, tear it off.

Take inventory of what photos you want to use and what sizes you may want to use. The majority of my photos were not digital, so I scanned them in at a high-detail ratio. I was able to use Paint and Microsoft Office Picture Manager to touch up old photos that were blurry, faded, or creased. Using Paint, you can zoom in on the photo up to 500% so touching up is easy to do. I think the results turned out great!

Before touch up: After touch up:

Then I cropped printed the photos in the sizes I wanted and put them into the frames. I numbered each picture frame and cut out a piece of newspaper the same exact size as the paper and wrote on it the same number as the picture frame it matched. I turned the frame so the hanger was facing up and put a hole in the newspaper where the nail should go (since not all frames are alike). I arranged the photos on my dining table so I could play with the arrangement.

I placed the newspaper cutouts of the frames on the wall in the same order as the arrangement on the table. I measured the distance between the frames to be sure everything would be spaced evenly since my arrangement is symmetrical. Since the nailhole was already marked in the newspaper I just nailed the wall through the paper, took off the newspaper, and hung up the matching photo. I stuck some museum wax on the corners and leveled out the frames (a necessity in earthquake country!)