How To Make A Cheap & Easy Photo Display

You might think that when you have a big family, you have pictures of kids everywhere. The sad truth is that there are a very overwhelming number of photographs to deal with. Then there is always one child who is completely unphotogenic and you can’t very well have pictures of some children up and not others. Plus there’s the whole issue of buying so many frames, where to fit them all, etc. What I’m trying to say is that I have very few pictures of my kids around my house. I decided to fix the situation in a way that would combine cheap and simple with cute and interesting and would allow me to use quite a lot of pictures. The whole set up cost less than $10 and that includes getting 5 x 7s made of most of my photographs. The nice thing is that this arrangement can be made bigger or smaller and goes well with any style of decor. For How-To Tuesday, I’ll show you how to do your own picture wall.

 

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Cardstock (if you use thinner paper, the pictures will curl when hung).

Photos (I used mostly 5 x 7s with a few 4 x 6s to make things look a little different)

Twine or rope (I used jute twine from Home Depot. $2.50 for a roll.)

Mini clothespins (Regular-sized ones are too hefty. I got mine at Michaels and Hobby Lobby. About $3 for 24. )

Glue of some sort (I like my Tombo but a gluestick will work fine.)

Pushpins. Clear pushpins are excellent decorating helpers. You’d be surprised how often you can find ways to use them.

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Step One: Crop and cut your cardstock and photos (if necessary). I left a 1″-1.5″ border of cardstock around each photo. For the love of Fiskars, please use a paper cutter and not scissors! It’s impossible to get a decently straight line with scissors. Believe me!

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Step Two: Apply glue to the back of the picture and try your best to apply it to the cardstock without it being crooked.

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Step Three: Use your twine and pushpins to string up your display (I did one row at a time). It works best to have a helper telling you if things look straight. You might decide to do several symmetrical, even rows or do them kind of topsy-turvy like I did. The nice thing about pushpins is that you can pull them out and reposition them without making a mess of the wall.

Step Four: Hang your mounted photos with mini clothespins. They hold the pictures up surprisingly well.

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Stand back and enjoy! It’s super simple to switch out pictures (cut a piece of cardstock and slap on a new photo. Or even better; flip the current picture over and glue a new photo to the back).  You’ll always have an easy way to display your latest photos.

 

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3 thoughts on “How To Make A Cheap & Easy Photo Display

  1. I’m totally stealing this. Thanks for helping my “prone to overcomplicate” brain! (Somebody should pinterest this, I’m sure it’d go viral:)

  2. Excellent! Will do this stat. I have so many random, cute pics of kids at various ages and just don’t know what to do with them. Now I do! Fun idea. Thanks for sharing.

  3. Although I already have a slightly different style of photo wall (magnets), reading your post made me realize that I haven’t put up a single picture of my now 9 month old baby! oops . that’s what’s nice about this style of photo wall–easy to change out the pictures as the kids grow. (If you remember. ahem.)

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