Inexpensive picture wall

Before we had our little bundle of joy, we hired a photographer to capture all of the moments from pregnancy to one year.  We chose Amanda Solak because of her beautiful pictures but then once we met her we knew we made the right choice!

http://solak-photography.com/

She is so good with Ethan and has really captured his personality. Having all of these photos is wonderful but it also causes me some stress every time we have another photo shoot....WHERE DO I PUT THEM ALL!!! I have picture frames all over this house now, and I have been going through and changing out pictures each time we get new ones. I have a battle every time I do it though because the one in the frame is so cute,  but the one in my hand is SO CUTE!!  I wish I could have every one of them hanging up in our house at all times but it might be a touch overwhelming. I have always had a piece of art hanging over the couch in the living room but once we had little man the art became much less important :) I wanted to hang all these wonderful pictures quickly one day so I decided to raid our closet. We had three of the old poster frames with the piece of "plastic glass." I didn't want to go and pay to have mats made for these frames since I wasn't planning on keeping them so I started looking around the house for items. I have so many left over scraps of fabric that I found one that would match the living room decor. I taped it down with masking tape to the cardboard backing.  I then framed out the picture with some left over poster board.  I think for not spending a dime that the arrangement came out decently.

look at that sweet baby holding his head up at 1 week 5 days!

 The shine off  that plastic "glass" was terrible!! You can see how the picture looks distorted because you can see yourself in the "mirror."  I would always stare at those glossy black plastic frames with a small bit of disgust.  I debated spray painting them but didn't even want to spend the money on spray paint for a plastic frame.  My mother in law took off this last week for vacation and we decided to go thrift shopping!! We went to a couple of thrift stores and I was keeping my watchful eye out for cute frames.  I found 5 frames for $17.  You should have seen the beautiful art??? from these puppies ha ha.!

I hurried them home and slapped them down on the garage floor the same day! I have a whole gallon of our trim color paint and started painting them up. I should have primered them since they took three coats and a "that's good enough" attitude from me :) I brought them in and it just happened to be Ethan's nap time!!! He laid down and I RAN!! He usually only sleeps for about 15-30 minutes which just isn't long enough... but today he slept for and hour and a half!! Thank You New Years Party!! I got all of my frames filled and glass cleaned (plus a nice glass cut on my hand) before he woke up. I was trying to hurry since I could tell he was starting to stir, and I broke the glass in one of my frames :( Well that will just have to wait for another day. I was going to splurge and buy matting for these frames but I really liked my fabric so I just kept it.  I first tape up the long ends to the cardboard backing of the picture frame.

Then fold up the ends like a Christmas package and tape them down.

 Then I taped down my poster board with my picture centered on the front. I may eventually splurge and buy a mat for this large picture frame....maybe :)

 So anyway, I laid them all out on the floor and tried to decide on an arrangement. That is always so hard for me! My mother in law had a picture frame just like one I bought and I was trying to work it into the arrangement by substituting that black frame in there. I just couldn't make it work!!

 I am such a symmetrical person. I really tried to have them asymmetrical but I just couldn't do it . This is the arrangement I decided on.

I got them all hung up and now I just have to clean up my mess!!

Before:

After +$17 !!

 Seeing them like this I really do like them both!