Picture Hanging Trick

    Our living room walls are incredibly bare; it is sad. To make up for the fact that we have no art that matches the look of our living room, I came up with the idea of hanging 5 monochromatic canvases I spray painted blue. I have 2 canvases of one size and and 3 of the other (odd numbers look better, but 3 wasn't quite enough and 5 of the same size was too big.) For visual interest, 2 are flipped vertical while the others remain horizontal. I worked all this out by laying them out on the living room floor and trying several different configurations until I found this one.

     And I will be honest, I hate hanging pictures.  Especially when I have to do math or use a ruler- two things that aren't hard by themselves, but when combined with my brain making things overly complicated, become impossible to use when hanging frames. But, I still like to have beautifully straight pictures that are exactly as far away from each other as I want. So I came up with an alternative method that my brain understands better.

How To:

1.     Find a cloth or piece of paper big enough for your project and lay it out on a flat surface. Arrange your canvases or frames into a configuration that is pleasing to you and will look awesome hanging on your wall.

2.     Add a piece of tape at the top of each canvas/frame to mark it's position on the cloth.

3.     Measure the distance from the wire you will hang your picture on and the edge of your frame with your fingers. (hopefully the wire isn't further down than your fingers can reach.)

4.     Place a piece of tape below the first piece of tape on the cloth. You want it to be the same width as that of your wire to frame edge.

5.     Hang up the cloth on your wall where you would like the canvases/frames to go.

6.     Use a pencil to make a tiny dot through the cloth or paper on to the wall. You should be marking the lower set of tape for each frame so that the hook will be positioned where your wire will lay.

7.      Next, place wall hooks (either command strips + plastic hooks OR a metal hook + nail) in the space on the wall that is marked with a pencil dot.

8.     Hang pictures in the same order you marked them onto the cloth or paper. Done!