Empty Picture Frames Part II: Paint and Hang

After you decided on your shades/colors for your empty frames via this post be sure to number each frame, both on your diagram and on the frame, like I did with the pink sticky notes.  You may think this is overkill but wait until you have 8 frames drying without any labels.  It is a mess figuring out where they go back into the cluster.  Numbering the frames also helps you know what shade or color each frame should be.

I went to Michaels and chose white, black, and medium gray acrylic paint.  Martha Stewart suggests semi gloss paint, but since that has a hefty price tag I went with acrylic.  The only downfall to acrylic is that it is easily scratched off so avoid moving the frames too much after they have dried.  If you take them straight from the floor to the wall you should be good to go!

I started painting the lightest frames first and then mixed the paint to progressively darker shades.  The frame material depended on how many coats of paint they needed, but it was typically one to two coats.  Make sure you paint the insides of the frames so you don’t see their natural color when you are looking at them sideways on the wall. 

After they had dried completely I again laid them out on the floor (over a trash bad) to see if I liked the effect and if any frame colors needed to be tweaked, and of course they did. 

After everything had completely dried (I left it overnight just to be safe) I cut paper sheets to the size of every frame and again numbered them.  I know, I know I may be going overboard with this numbers thing but you can never be to sure. 

Using these tools, and my printed diagram as my guide, I taped the sheets up to the wall and tweaked until it was perfect (notice the numbers). 

After I painted I realized that some of the pictures didn’t have hooks to hang on the wall with.  I bought some simple hangers from Target and nailed them on the back.  Make sure they are centered or your picture will hang crooked.  This is really a step you should do BEFORE you paint, but I guess I was too focused on the numbers thing to think this through. 

Anyhoo! The hubs did the grunt work of hanging the frames to the corresponding numbers.  Since I am controlling and my anxiety was at level 100, my hubs kicked me out while he was nailing.  He did a perfect job of course.  Afterwards we got a little something like this:

So here’s the budget rundown:

Frames: $8.00

Paint: $5.00

Hammer, painters tape, paper: FREE!

Hangers: $4.00

Total Project Budget: $17.00!