New Gallery Wall Frames/ Anthropologie Hack

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ByMarci


Hello again!

It’s been a while.  Things have been crazy over here preparing for my son’s birthday, having the house painted, and traveling to the camp one last time to close down the hunting season!

I finally finished my wall of pictures last night.  I love displaying black and white photos from over the years and changing them out regularly.  We have the perfect walls for this in our hallway leading to the guest rooms.  Before we had the house painted the hallway looked like this…

 

look at those yellow walls, yuk!!!

I liked this collage look for a while but after having the walls painted, I wanted fresher, cleaner look.  It was also time to change out the pictures to incorporate some new ones of the baby and our new nephew.  I found this pin on Pinterest of some unique looking copper frames from Anthropologie…

 

I LOVE the look of these frames and thought the way the pictures are displayed are so interesting and different!  But, they range in price from $28-$48 on Anthropologie’s website and being the thrifty person that I am, I decided that was too much to spend when I could just make them myself for way less!
I took some of my larger frames from the original wall that I already had and 3 new frames from Walmart.  (2- 8×10’s that were $4 each and 1-11×17 that was $8).  First, I removed the glass and all of the inserts because I needed to get into all of the visible surfaces with my paint brush and I didn’t want to get any paint on the glass…
Then, I painted each frame with 1 coat of Chalk Paint.  (I used French Linen because I already had a can of it.  The color really doesn’t matter because it ended up being completely covered in gold by the end.  I just wanted to use chalk paint as a base because the frames are plastic and I needed a good base coat to stick)

After I let the chalk paint thoroughly dry, I added 2 coats (letting the first coat dry in between) of Liquid Leaf in Classic Gold to the frames.  Then I let them sit overnight.

After the paint was completely dry, I covered the backing of each frame with some leftover fabric I had laying around from another project from Hobby Lobby.  I chose this fabric because it was free and because it looked similar to the linen backing in the Anthropologie frames…

 

I secured the fabric to the frame backing with a hot glue gun.  A small line of hot glue around the edge of the frame board was enough to keep the fabric tightly in place.  I pulled the fabric as tight as possible around each side before securing it to the glue.  Then, I placed the pictures on the fabric in the order that I wanted them and secured them to the fabric with some rolled up tape on the back.

Last, I hammered in 2 picture hangers with loops on the top to each frame.  Then, I threaded twine (leftover from Christmas packages) through the loops and tyed a knot to make a continuous circular strand of twine that the picture would hang from.  (I forgot to take a picture of this from the back so I will add one as soon as I get a chance)

And ta dah…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that’s it!  I love how much cleaner these frames look as opposed to the old ones in this hallway.  Also, look how much better the paint looks!!!  I will have a separate post about this later on and a full house tour but for now, the color is called Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore.
Remember, when life hands you lemons, turn them into something lovely!
-Marci