The Photo Wall....

 The photo wall is done, the photo wall is done! This past Saturday marked our 1 year anniversary of being in our new house. I can hardly believe it's been one year. Not only does the time go by so fast but the house still looks bare in many rooms. We still need to buy furniture and hang a lot (I mean a lot!) of pictures. I was bound and determined that by the one year mark I was at least going to get something up on the walls in our dining room and I did it!

It took a long time to decide what to do on this wall. It's a bit strange as it has these two high, square windows in it. Finally after seeing many photo walls on Pinterest and loving them I decided to give one a try. Now I'm not going to lie, it was hard! Way harder than you'd think. In fact I'm not sure I'd attempt another one but maybe I just need to give it some time. Lol.

Step 1: trace the frames you're going to use onto craft paper and then tape the craft paper to your wall until you come up with a pattern you like (the paper in the above picture stayed there a good month). I found it helped to lay the frames out on the floor or table as I was taping the paper to walls to help me visually see what the frames would look like especially since I was using different colours, types and sizes.

Step 2: after many, many, many trails finally decide on the pattern you like best whether it's because you're too tired to go on or because you actually like it, at some point you just need to decide. Here's our winner (well almost). 

Step 3: Lay the frames out on the floor to make sure you like how they look and so you remember what goes where as you start to hang them (finding time to do this when your children won't step on or move said frames is another story). 

Step 4: figure out which pictures you want to use inside the frames. This may take awhile especially if you use the standard picture sizes in your printing program only to find out they've been cropped too small and the pictures don't fit in the frames/matts (argh!). Keep going until you're finally happy. As you'll see in the picture below I was hanging the frames as I was putting the pictures in them.

Step 5: Hang your frames! The wall slowly coming together. Now this took a bit of time as well because I decided to use a new product that would keep me from having to put too many holes in my wall (being that it's a brand new house it hurt a wee bit every time I hammered a nail into the beautiful, smooth wall). I used nails for about half the frames but the other half I used...

Have you heard of these? I love them! Love them! Basically it's like velcro for your walls except when you take the adhesive stripes off your walls they don't leave any marks what so ever! Love! 

 They're Command Hanging Strips. Basically you sandwich two strips together, remove the paper from one side and mount onto your frame. You then clean the wall with rubbing alcohol, remove the paper from the other side of your strips and position the frame on the wall where you want it. You then press firmly for 30 seconds and then carefully, from the bottom, remove the frame from the wall. One strip will remain on the wall and the other on your frame. You then have to wait an hour before putting your frame back on the wall (this is why it takes a bit longer than nails). After an hour snap your frame back onto the strip that's on the wall and that sucker ain't going anywhere!  

And now the finished product. It's not perfect which bothers me. The spacing was hard to get exactly right and a few frames are slightly croaked but honestly these are more things I see because I did it. Most people that look at the wall don't even notice. Thank goodness!

 I'm pretty happy with it and it's nice to have some family pictures up on the wall finally. Now only 20 or so more wall to go!