Photo Wall Art - Portrait Display

As you know, our formal pictures are in our formal living room.  For the Family Room, I wanted something more casual.  I've seen several ideas about cutting boards and Mod Podging on photos so they look like they're on gallery boards or canvas, etc.  I was going to do that, but then it evolved to all the pictures being on one board - I LOVE it!

First, I took down my curtains from my family room (seen at the bottom of this Post About Curtains) and rigged them up outside so I could take pictures with them as the background - I knew the pictures would match the room that way!  For the casual feel I went with some crazy faces and some not - just take A LOT of pictures so you have options.  The hardest was to get my just-turned-2-year-old to make crazy faces on demand - I ended up making faces at him and he would mimic them back.  I made 8x10 prints (through MPix - so impressed with them).

To start, I painted a thin board (it can't be too heavy because it'd be trickier to hang on the wall) black - obviously, color choice is up to you.  I had the board cut to 36 inches by 40 inches - I have 12 pictures with 1.5 inch gaps between everything.

Then I put mod podge on the back of the pictures and stuck them down where I wanted them.   

Then I put a generous coat of Mod Podge over the top of everything - this helped seal down the edges of the pictures and give some texture (like canvas) to the finish.

We went with exposed hardware and put a screw and washer in each corner.  Trevor found some rubber spacer things and used those behind the board  (kind of hard to see - it's black) to make the board sit out from the wall - I love that.

It fills up the wall behind the couch.  This view is standing in the family room looking back into the kitchen:

The kids love having their "crazy faces" hanging on the wall.  I love the impact and personality it adds to our family room.  You can do this - it's just spreading glue on a board - go try it!

entering this month - fingers crossed!