hanging artwork

Do you have a bunch of photos or paintings that you want to put on the wall, but become totally overwhelmed thinking about arranging them?  Well, look no further, I have an answer.

I must state, first and foremost, that you probably should NOT hang artwork while intoxicated or really REALLY tired.  You tend to make mistakes that way....  Fortunately in my case (tired, not intoxicated- the latter may have been more fun), my mistakes weren't so bad.  I would also like to add, that the photos here were taken with my phone, so the quality isn't that good.  I default back to my being tired....  

With all of these excuses, why on earth am I posting this, you might ask yourself.  Well, I have had these 5 beautiful farm animal paintings by Brenda Ferguson for quite a while now, and I have been avoiding hanging them.  Every time I looked at these paintings, I just couldn't figure out how to arrange them on the wall.  And then it came to me.  It was an epiphany.  Not to be confused with all the other epiphanies that have flashed before my brain today.  Or would those be hallucinations?

First, you haphazardly hang a clock with a tack.  Then you design your artwork around that.  Look on the floor, and while you pick up your kids' crumpled paper, look for the pieces that have the least amount of scribbles on it.  You may want to try to straighten them out a bit, but as you can see, I couldn't be bothered with that part...

I then put the paintings on the paper, and traced the outermost edges.  I cut out the paper, and voila!  You now have a template.  Because the paintings are all the same size, I drew little two second gesture sketches on the paper so I knew which was which.

I then did a quick measure. I flipped the painting over and measured where the hook is.  I measured the uppermost part of the inner hole of the hook, if that makes sense.  In other words, I visualized where the nail would sit in the hook, and how the hook would be sitting on the nail.  That makes perfect sense, right?  So, on these square 6" paintings, the hook was 1 1/4" down from the top, and it was right in the middle, at 3".  I put a mark on the paper where the nail should go.  The other two paintings have a wire, so I flipped the painting over, and pulled the wire in the direction of the top of the painting, to make it taut.  I then measured down from the top of the painting, to the wire, and then the center of the painting as well.  And I taped my arrangement to the wall.

I then put nails straight into the paper.  This is where my tiredness came into play.  I would recommend that you get out your level and make sure that all of the rows are straight.  Or you could even get out a ruler, and make the spaces in between the paintings even, or whatever you like.  I, myself, like it all a little bit off, because, well, I am a little bit off...

So I eyeballed the arrangement, and didn't measure, and nailed it to the wall.

I then hung the paintings right over the paper, to see if everything was ok.

I had to re-nail two nails into the wall, because that's when I realized I hadn't leveled or measured anything.  But I don't think it looks too bad!  The one thing I am impressed with is that the top pink painting on the left is perfectly lined up with the rooster.  And the top of the silver frame on the left is exactly at the midpoint of the silver frame on the right (5" on the dot), which is also at the exact middle of the space between the pink goats and the two beneath.  Talk about eyeballing!!

In any case, now that you have your arrangement nailed to the wall, carefully tear off the paper, and you, my friends, are all done!

Happy hanging!