I hate painting. And I hate having to start an entry out with that negative statement. But hello?? It is a pain in me arse. But it sure makes things look purty. Or at least clean. So my spare bedroom/home office/craft center/art studio is sorely in need of a good paint job. I think the last time it was painted was about 20 years ago. I would know. I was the one that painted last time as well. Anyways, I didn’t have enough energy to paint the whole room especially after I went framing crazy this weekend. So instead, I painted one wall and hung pictures. (Hung? Hang? People hang. Laundry is hung.) Aren’t I a breath of fresh air with all my morbid know-how?

So this is the wall beforehand. And no, I am not showing you the whole room because well, it’s not ready and because I said so!

Don’t worry wall. We’ll fix you up in no time. So after one coat of primer and two coats of Behr pure white semi-gloss…

So I had big frames to hang. Big and heavy. And I am not training for World’s Strongest Woman so I decided to do a little “virtual” heavy lifting to figure out where the pictures would go on the wall.

Here’s what I did.

1. Measured all the pictures (in the frames) and wrote the measurements on a piece of paper.
2. Converted the measurements to smaller measurements so they could fit on a piece of paper. Example: 24″ x 36″. Every inch was converted to 1/8″. So the poster (in miniature) would measure 3″ x 4″.
3. Measure the height and width of the wall space that you will be using. So for example, I will be putting up shelves on the far-right wall and I didn’t want pictures hanging directly over the desk so I didn’t count that in the measurement of the wall space. I also didn’t want to hang anything below a certain height on the wall so I took that into account as well. So after that long explanation, only measure the wall space that you will actually be hanging the pictures. Phew!
4. Convert the wall space to the same measurements as the miniature photo measurements. (1″ = 1/8″) I can’t really remember the measurements of the wall so let’s just say they were  70″ high x 64″ wide.  Converted = 8 3/4″ x 8″. Cut a piece of paper to those measurements.
5. Take another piece of paper (preferably a different color from the “wall” paper) and measure out all of your pictures. Write the name of the picture on each of the mini-pictures. Then cut out all of the mini pictures.
6. Arrange the mini-pictures on the mini-wall. Take as long as you want…(no muscles were strained during this process).  

This is what mine looked like.

I started with the top right picture (Klimt) then Van Gogh. I started there because I knew I had more restrictions seeing as I didn’t want to wind up over the desk.

And this is how it turned out…

It’s my inspiration wall. This wall includes posters of places I’ve lived and visited, photos I’ve taken, goals I’ve accomplished and sometimes art that I simply love.