Free DIY Wooden Frames

Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I am mildly obsessed with the Sandia Mountains. These majestic mountains can be seen from literally every spot in the city. Just look east and there they are. After moving to the east coast ten years ago, I still find myself scanning the horizon for my mountains much like a toddler blindly reaches for her blanket in moments of stress.

When I went to college in Virginia, I tried to placate myself with photos of the mountains pasted on every inch of my cinder block dorm room. The above photo is actually a card that followed me to every dorm room and apartment until I graduated. For the past six years it's been in a box of mementos hidden from view because I now require my art framed instead of merely taped to the wall.

After finishing my take on the recent pallet art phenomenon (check it out here), I began brainstorming other ways of using paint stir sticks. With the help of my trusty miter saw I knew I could easily make a picture frame.

After few 45 degree angle cuts I had the beginnings of a frame.  I took the scraps of some stir sticks and used them to secure the sticks together at the angles with gorilla glue.

Voila!  A simple frame was created...for free!  Add some paint, glue on a sawtooth hanger, and throw in a picture - you've got yourself a piece of art worthy of more than a dorm room wall.

Now when I find myself homesick and needing some comfort, I can glance over at my mountains and feel a bit calmer.

Styrofoam Upcycle #4

Last spring we were cleaning out our storage shed when we found a styrofoam cooler that was merely taking up space. Instead of throwing it away, I decided to upcycle as much of it as possible and proceeded to make a couple frames and a few awesome letters for my gallery wall (seen here and here).

Well, that styrofoam cooler produced more styrofoam that I thought possible when I was dissecting it and I finally got around to upcycling another piece of the cooler.

 I had cut out a variety of rectangles knowing I wanted to make some textured frames.  I have many frames displayed on our gallery wall, but aside from my twig art and cork heart, texture and natural fibers were missing (and we all know how much I love bringing natural fibers and organic matter into the mix)

Using some hemp twine I had from a project gone bad, I began wrapping and gluing (with hot glue), wrapping and gluing, wrapping and gluing. 

 I love how some of the smaller details turned out. The V pattern at the corners and centers of each long leg add additional interest.

 It feels good to create something out of what would normally be thrown in a landfill and left to blow around for hundreds of years. Instead, I have a lightweight, textured frame to add to my gallery wall.

I'm still deciding if I should leave it empty or add some art. What do you think?

Gallery Wall Remix

One of my favorite things about our new apartment is the gallery wall above our long two-person desk.  I love staring at it while sitting at the computer and reminiscing about the photographs or post cards or art we've hung up. Sometimes I found myself walking into the office just to look.

BEFORE

Lately, though, we've been accumulating some new pieces of art we wanted to add to the wall.  We initially hung everything thinking we'd just add onto it as we wanted, however most of our new pieces are larger and would look funky added on top or to the side of the gallery wall...they needed to be incorporated well. That last sentence may have been thought inside my head and not shared with my husband...which might explain the shock and surprise from John.

While John was in class I took everything off the wall and laid it all out on the floor....he was pretty taken back when he came home and couldn't walk into the office. As he realized he'd have to rehang everything, he looked pretty glum.

Our office looked like this for several weeks as we gained the energy to tackle the wall.

 We finally tackled the daunting task a few weeks ago and once again have a fabulous gallery wall (with the help of Layla-Butt, of course).

 Our goal was to bring some more color to the wall so the pictures were the focus instead of the mismatched frames.

AFTER

We did this by incorporating a few bold colors (like the robins egg, pink, and yellow) throughout the new art pieces.  Notice our LOVE painting is the same color as the frames that are in each section of the wall. We also placed the sunset in the lower center with a flower of the same color in the upper center to bring focus to those colors.

As we were collecting art and pictures to hang up, we got creative with the frames by making some of our own out of styrofoam (you can read about that here, here, and here) and cardboard.  Can you see the handmade frames?

 We are in love with our remixed gallery wall.  The large scale of the gallery adds more interest than before (which helps because our office is pretty bare) and the pops of color help balance out the large white desk we made and the large brown bookshelf that also resides in the room.

I'm so glad I got over my initial fear of creating a gallery wall - now we have a place for all of our fun art and pictures and nothing is hiding under the bed or couches due to no wall space.

The Intimidation of a Gallery Wall

Everywhere I look there are fabulous gallery walls. Magazines, online, television...and the galleries of pictures always make my jaw drop. The impact of a wall filled to the brim with pictures is spectacular.

spotted at The Kid Collective

Watching television and movies I always see perfectly put together walls of photos up a stairwell or across a living room wall. They look sophisticated, elegant, and professionally done. I wanted one. In a bad way. In graduate school I went so far as buying a set of "gallery frames" that came with 12 matching frames in which I hung photos of flowers I had taken. The impact was, shall we say, significantly lacking. It was dull, boring, and not what other gallery walls looked like. When I moved, I hid all the frames under beds and couches and refused to hang them.

Spotted at The Designers Attic

All those pictures and frames hiding in every crevice our teeny apartment had drove my husband crazy. He was forever begging me to hang the billion frames I owned or throw them away.  My desire for the perfectly planned and hung wall of photos paralyzed me and the frames stayed tucked away until we moved to North Carolina. After packing boxes of pictures and frames - and then unpacking them - I was ready to try again.
 

spotted at Coastal Living

I spent time looking at images of the "perfect" gallery wall and trying to determine what had gone so horribly wrong in my first attempt. What I discovered was that the walls I loved were ones with mismatched frames - color, size, shape. I was drawn to the walls that had texture and interest, that showed character and randomness.  I gathered the billion frames I owned into our office and decided then and there I would proudly display each and every photo and frame I owned, no matter how much it didn't match.

In the end, it wasn't too difficult to plan where to hang each picture. I gave myself the easy job of laying each picture on the ground and rearranging until I found an arrangement that worked. I started with the biggest frame and decided to work around that. Once everything was laid out, I cut out templates that fit each piece to be hung and wrote a description of the photo it represented. I then taped them to the wall to ensure I liked how the arrangement looked on the wall as much as I did on the floor.

That's when I called John in to do the hard work. It was his job to hang each picture to my very exact specifications. Just kidding - the great thing that I realized in making this random, eclectic gallery was that imperfections would just make it more eclectic.  John began by hanging the central piece and worked outward and upward.

We've slowly been adding to it and the randomness of the arrangement allows for us to simply place a frame wherever we desire. I currently have a picture that is in need of a slightly larger frame than the majority of those hung and plan to hang it on the small side wall in place of some of the smaller frames. I'll relocate the smaller frames by moving them to the center of the wall and above the rest.

We also have a smaller, more uniform gallery in our bedroom that is a bit more precise.

This one took more measurements and discussion on how far apart the pictures should be from one another. Once that was decided, John measured where the frame hung, marked it on the paper template that was taped to the wall, and nailed directly through the paper to ensure we hung the pictures perfectly. With the small scale, the exactness of this project wasn't too intimidating....plus we had practice.

So, if you're like me and am overwhelmed and intimated by the awesomeness that is the gallery wall, I say go for it. Remember, it doesn't need to be perfect and you can always add or subtract should you want to change your arrangement. A few holes in the wall are nothing compared to the satisfaction of staring at a vast display of pictures.