How to Make a Collage With Mismatched Frames
- 1). Choose a wall for your collage. Homeowners often dedicate whole walls in living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms for wall collages, but consider other possibilities such as stairways, corners and hallways. Browse the Web for ideas, if necessary.
- 2). Gather the frames and artwork. Use whatever frames you have on hand or scour garage sales, flea markets and secondhand shops for cheap deals. You can choose artwork with a shared theme that will match the room -- perhaps old recipe cards and paintings of food for a kitchen or photos of family members and pets for a living room -- or choose to keep your collection eclectic.
- 3). Paint the frames. Remove the glass, artwork and backing from each frame and spread the frames on a dropcloth outside. Spray paint each one and allow to dry; use as many coats as necessary. You can paint all the frames the same color for a unified look or paint several in a complementary colors. Make sure your color choices will work well in the space you've chosen for the collage.
- 4). Design the collage layout with the glossy advertisement pages from a newspaper. Cut pieces of newspaper into the same shapes and sizes as your frames. Tape them to the wall with masking or painter's tape and move them around until you find an arrangement you like.
- 5). Reassemble the frames and insert the artwork. Then, measure the distance from the top edge of each frame to the hook for the nail. Find the same spot on the corresponding newspaper form and mark it with a pencil. Hammer a nail into the wall straight through the mark on the newspaper. Remove the newspaper form and hang the picture. Repeat for all remaining frames.
