I love the look of photo galleries that people use in their home decor, especially the look of the frames when they have contrasting colors. My living room walls have been bare since we moved in over a year ago, and we have loads of adorable photos of family members saved on our computer, just sitting there. I set out to do a Diy photo gallery. For the frames, I shopped at Goodwill during their half off sale, and chose only wooden frames, of all different sizes and shapes. The price I paid per photo frame was $1 each, on average. I brought them home and painted half of them a soft green, and the other half a country blue. These colors go well with the colors used in the rest of my house, and the paints were free samples of paint I received from Lowe's home improvement store. Because all of the frames I chose were made of wood, they were easy and quick to paint. Having photos printed can be costly, unless you look for deals periodically. I had photos printed as I saw digital coupon codes available for free prints at Meijer and Walgreens. Slowly, my pile of photos grew until I had enough to fill my frames. Another inexpensive alternative would be to take advantage of Shutterfly's free 100 photo print offer they have periodically, where you only pay taxes and shipping, or you could print them on photo quality paper at home if you have a decent printer. Do you have family photos displayed in your home? How do you like to display your family photos?
I saw on one of the home improvement shows a similar project. The host purchased about a dozen frames and painted them white. She then grouped the frames by size without photos as a wall art.
This is another place where I get lost on Pinterest, looking at all the great photo displays and ideas for frames. I am also going to be working on a gallery wall pretty soon. My daughter gave me more pictures of the grandkids for Christmas. I'm not sure how I want to display everything yet though, so I'll probably start by cutting out paper templates the sizes of my frames and taping those to the wall with painter's tape. That way, I can move them around until I get the look and feel I want, and then I can actually start hanging stuff. Yep, that's another tip I learned on Pinterest.
I never knew Lowe's gave out free samples of paint like that - that's a great idea to save money on painting the frames yourself. Another place you can find some interesting frames pretty cheap would be Pat Catan's (they're an arts and crafts store similar to Micheals). I'm not sure if Micheals does this too, but Pat Catan's often have an aisle of oddball frames they are selling for next to nothing. These are basically frames made up from leftover moulding, and/or frames from custom framing orders that were either done wrong or the customer never came back to pick up their orders. So you're not often going to find standard sizes, such as 18 x 24, but if you get a little creative with the artwork you're putting into them, you can save a ton vs. having your work custom framed.
I love to go to yard sales in the summertime. Often a lot of people will have old excess photo frames that they're willing to part with for a quarter each, so long as you buy several. Another thing I like to do is take poster board, thin prints of photos, cut the poster board to slightly smaller than the photo and wrap the edges. If you use the double sided mounting tabs you can hang these pretty easily and they look like wrapped thin canvas on a budget. They're pretty fragile and it takes some practice to get it to look right, but once you get it it's an easy way to take up wall space.
I'd love some free paint as well. They don't seem to do that at our local home improvement stores. I wish they did. I love getting cheap wooden frames. I much prefer the real wood ones to the cheap junk they pass off as new (and expensive) in a lot of stores. So, count me in for hunting thrift stores and garage sales for real wooden picture frames. Another option, instead of wrapping frames or posters is to wrap boxes as well. I've seen wall art where they put fabric or scrapbook paper on canvas, but why use expensive canvases when you can simply use a cardboard box that's about the same thickness? It's free. Can't get cheaper than that.
For those who are bummed out about the lack of free paint samples at their local store, Wal-Mart and Home Depot will sell you sample size jars of paint to try for less than $3. Or you can buy the Folk Art craft paint at Wal-Mart for 88 cents and use that to paint your picture frames.
I just recently did this using one huge photo frame I got for free from a recycling centre. I used wallpaper that I got for £0.10 for the whole roll because it was the last one left as the backing for the photos to go on and placed the photos onto the wallpaper. I'm thinking of doing the same sort as you did too though @prose for another wall in another room. As I'm not allowed to actually hang the frames on the wall I was thinking of making enough for it to go between the top of a bookshelf and the ceiling and secure it to my bookshelf instead.
