How To Create A Photo Collage Wall

I may have an addiction to photos and have more than one photo collage wall. This means lots of nail holes in my walls which at first was a headache to get it just right. I have a photo collage wall the is asymmetrical and one that is very much symmetrical. Thus I needed to be pretty darn precise.

The first time I laid my photos on the floor until I was happy with my arrangements. Then I would take "rough" measurements, had my husband take the frame and try and figure where the bracket was at and put a hole in the wall. The first time he did this he put the nail in place where the pencil dot was. We use the nail hooks for photos to put less pressure on the nail and hole so that means all my photos were actually hanging lower than I wanted. Being the perfectionist I am I had to go back and create a lot more holes in my wall to get it somewhat more correct. As you can see from the photo above, the whole photo collage wall is a lot lower than is visually pleasing. Then the tornado came and the wall had to be fixed, holes filled in, and I got the opportunity to re-hang everything.

I did things differently this time.

1.) I arranged my photos on the floor making sure that my overall composition created the lines I wanted (like long horizontal lines).

2.) I measured EVERYTHING and made sure it was exact. This took a short amount of time. I would draw a symbol to represent each frame. I would mark where the bottom of the photo was. Another dot was drawn where the top of the frame was. Then I measured in to where the middle of my bracket was (which is rarely the precise middle of the frame) and how far from the top of the frame it was.

3.) I would measure the distance between my frames and any other measurement I thought would be important. This included the overall height of my photo collage so that I could center it with the opening on my wall.

4.) The measurements were then transferred to the wall by small pencil marks that were later erased.

5.) I made sure the bottom of the hook was placed on top of the dot indicating where the bracket is located.

I know it sounds like it was a lot of work but it actually took less time to hang my photos up the second time around and I wasn't angry or frustrated during the process AND I only had to pound in the minimum number of holes. I don't have one extra hole. My photos and other decorative items are exactly where I want them and look like they were professionally hung.

How do you hang photos? Is it a grueling process?

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