Trashy Tuesday Create a Photo Gallery Wall for Cheap

Trashy Tuesday Create a Photo Gallery Wall for Cheap

Hello!  It’s Trashy Tuesday again, but it is actually Wednesday  by the time this goes in the can. 

Have you always wanted to have a show stopper Photo Gallery Wall, but the cost of the frames, the math of figuring out where they all go, or just the work involved with all of it held you back?

For years, at least 12 of them, I have wanted to have a photo gallery wall on my stairs.  This is how the stairs looked before, clean beautiful walls, nicely painted stairs.  You can read about how I did the stairs, and trust me, it wasn’t easy, but I was thorough!  HERE. 

And here is the best part, it cost me practically NOTHING.  That’s right.  Nothing.  If you follow along here, you will know I find the best junk.  One morning I scored the mother load of a box of old metal frames.

 Someone had tried in vain to sell them at a garage sale….I guess no takers.  So they put them out in a box marked “Karen”.  Actually it said FREE, but it may as well have had my name on it.

I got in my head that I could paint those ugly frames, pick up pre cut matting at Hobby Lobby and create my own gorgeous photo gallery wall.

I started by tracing all the frames on newspaper, then kept a count of what I had.

Next I placed the newspaper on the wall and moved them around until I had the layout I desired.  By the way, my kids came home from school and thought I had finally gone round the bend when they saw the newspaper hanging on the wall.  Hey, that can be art too right?

You can see how easy the whole process is from beginning to end in my short video:

I removed all the glass and dust from the old frames and set up shop to paint them in a few different colors of 100% Natural Debi’s DIY Clay Based Paints.  It was SO EASY.  The paints are so richly pigmented, only 2 coats were needed on everything.  The Clay will stick to anything so painting any type of material was a breeze.

Once I had them all back together, I laid them out on my Living Room floor to get a feel for the whole collection.

Then the hanging begun.  I used a combination of Command Hooks, Tiny Nails and Sticky Putty for posters.  The sticky putty was the miracle worker of the group because I could put little teeny amounts on small frames and have them stay put.  The putty works like magic to keep frames from swaying about when they are in a high traffic area like a stair well too.

I mixed in a big B for Berg too.  That was one of two freebie (ugly prints with a pretty frame) I found for free a while back.  I used 2 coats of Debi’s DIY Paint in Bead Board and a stencil for the letter B in DIY Paints Hey Sailor.

The photos and the art work have been up on my wall for over a month now, and not one frame has come down, gone crooked or just fallen off.

I am hoping to add a few more photos as the years go on, but for now, I am pretty darn happy with my Photo Gallery Wall I did for Cheap.

Want to see more Trash to Treasure Makeovers?  Check out my Portfolio and be sure to subscribe to get my latest Trash, right into your mailbox!