Do-It-Yourself Frames & How to Hang Art

My husband has been hassling me for months to fill our walls with art. I have been putting it on the back burner since custom framing art gets expensive so I have been on the hunt for good, quality frames that don't look cheap, but are cheap on the pocket. :) So over these next few days, I will post on how to fill up your walls and different ways of arranging art for the walls.

One of my favorite frame selections are from CB2 and seen in these pics are their Gallery Frames in the 5x7 and 4x6 sizes. Featured in all the frames are pictures from our wedding day and our honeymoon. I printed these all through Kodak Gallery on their Metallic Paper which gives the images a very cool sheen to black & white and color photos.

These square Gallery Frames are hung in our master bedroom in a series of 3 over our dressers. One key important rule that I cannot stress enough is when you hang any kind of art, is to hang it at the average "eye" level. Often people make the mistake of hanging art way too high, and it makes the wall and room feel totally off balanced. Don't get me wrong, there are times when you can break this rule, if you have high ceilings and have large pieces of art, or if you are doing a collage of frames along a wall. This rule usually applies to smaller, individual pieces of art.

Obviously when you stack two art pieces together, both cannot be at "eye" level. So what you do is treat them both as one piece of art, and pick the middle point and hang that at "eye" level.

When you hang frames, it doesn't always have to be in a perfect grid. Here, I did a zig zag pattern along the staircase wall since it fit the composition of the space. This hanging format can be a little trickier for some people. I didn't just do it randomly. Imagine one invisible line going down the middle of this composition; if you did, you will see that the left and right side are balanced in mass.

One last important tip on hanging art on the wall. Make sure the art fits the space. Don't put a small 4x6 frame all alone on a gigantic, bare wall. If you're still not sure what to do, walk into museums or art galleries to see how they hang art. They do an excellent job and take note at the height in which they were hung. They are extremely decisive and particular on height measurements for hanging.