Just Hanging Around - Decorating my living room.

Today I hung pictures on my freshly painted living room walls.

Can I just say Stress-Full!

The walls we'd worked so hard to patch and sand and paint were so beautiful it was hard to make myself take a hammer and nail to it.

So hard in fact I had to call in reinforcements to give me a pep-talk and tell me it was going to be okay!

Aubri's really good at telling me everything is going to be okay and isn't that what friends are for?

As I got ready to hang the pictures I realized I was going to have to use math.....good thing I like math.

Here's what I did just in case you decide to hang a semi-symmetrical-horizontal-parallel picture grouping sometime.

It really helped that my pictures were all 12x12 inch squares.

I found my center and using my level placed painter's tape along the center line making sure it was straight up and down. (the left edge of the purple tape line is the center.)

From there I decided how many inches I wanted between the edge of each picture. Horizontally I wanted each picture to be spaced 7 inches and vertically 5 inches apart.

I  knew the nail would need to be in the center of the picture (6 inches in) so if I divide the center space amount (7 inches) in half = 3.5 inches and add that to the 6 inches to find the center of the photo you get 9.5 inches.

So my first two marks were made 9.5 inches on either side of the center.

Wow sounds like I'm writing a story problem.

From there I added

6 inches + 7 inches (gap) + 6 inches = 19 inches

My next two marks were made 19 inches to the right and 19 inches to the left of the first two marks I made.

I put painters tape on the wall in the general area of each mark and then used a level to measure out and mark each spot with a pencil on the tape.

Now moving up.

5 inch (gap) + 12 picture = 17 inches

Each point was marked exactly 17 inches above the first row.

I used a level again to make sure the marks were straight vertically from each other and straight horizontally.

(This is the point where I called my friend to come and check my work.)

On my pencil mark on the tape I pushed the nail through slightly to make a small hole (indentation) in the wall and then I peeled the tape off and hammered the nail in through the small hole I'd made with the nail.

So, here's my before.

AND...

Here's my after!

What do you think?

I love it!

In fact I can't stop looking at it.

And asking my 4 year old what she thinks.

She finally said, "You keep asking and I keep telling you it looks good. Come-on-mom."

Hmmm? is she 4 or 14?

And here's my button monogram.

I love it too.

I ended up going to Ben Franklin and having them cut a mat for me.

They used some left over matting and I just had them do a basic cut so my final price was mucho inexpensive! Which I like very much, thank you!

This is one of those rare projects that turned out even better than it looked in my brain and that makes me oh so very happy!