Displaying Your Photos — by Guest Mom Lindsey Johnson
In my opinion, nothing makes a home your own like the pictures hanging on your walls. Whether it's original art, vintage posters, or beloved photos of your family, pictures on the wall can really dress up and personalize where you live.
Over the past few months, I have spent hours trying to organize, edit, and decide which photographs I want to display on our walls. I've been driving myself crazy!
Then one day I had this thought: Why don't I pick a theme for each room?
Maybe this will explain better what I mean:
Kitchen:
Pictures of kids eating or with messy faces
Bathroom:
Kids in the tub
Bedrooms:
Sleeping pictures, playing around, jumping
Playroom or Kids' Room:
Kids playing or being creative—painting, coloring
Family Room:
Formal portraits and family pictures
Living Room:
Artsy photos of landscapes, nature, etc.
I haven't narrowed down my choices all the way yet, but at least I feel like it's a start. I've been slowly collecting frames I like, too. I'm thinking I really like gallery type frames with really wide, white matting around each photo.
What method(s) do you use to display your family's pictures? What kinds of frames do you like? Do share . . .
posted by Gabrielle of Design Mom at Friday, March 23, 2007
31 Comments:
LOVE the eating pictures for the kitchen. that is a fabulous idea!
I love your photos Linds. They are so beautiful. And, I like your idea of organizing them. My problem is that I am so sentimental about what I put up that I can put pictures up, but I can't take them down. My house is starting to look like a shrine to my kid.. it's a bit embarassing.
I especially love the shot of Lilly coloring. I can't believe she was so patient to do that much coloring at her age, she might be an artist?!?
very cute photos! one way i like to display my photos is to get a wide black shelf and then different size black frames with white mats and then i just lean the frames on the shelf up against the wall - i like it because i can re arrange the photos whenever i feel like it without putting new holes in the walls ... plus then you can put something cute on the shelf with tit (ei: a vintage letter that goes with the pictures) also shutterfly makes large prints (16"x20") for $17.99 so i like to throw one of those into the mix :0)
yikes that was long wasnt it?
oh sakes ... i made a typographical error in that post ... hopefully design mom can go in and fix IT!
I'm really enjoying your guest blogging Lindsey! Very clever photo display idea! I am at the point that I'm paralyzed by too many choices in the picture department. You've helped me to narrow it down. I'm trying to pick a few high quality pics to do in 16x20 for a large wall... My sister-in-law has blown up several family favorite pictures into poster-size displays around her house and I loved it. It wasn't as overwhelming as it sounds.
Leslie--
Thank you!
Alyssa--
I love that idea! I'm totally going to do that.
Tiffany--
I do the same thing, which is why I'm having such a hard time deciding which pics to use! I think Lilly is going to be an artist--it's in her genes and she has that crazy, zany personality to boot.
Leisha--
I really want to do a few poster size pictures. I think they look awesome!
What beautiful pictures! Just the inspiration I need to do a little more with the family photos than just store them on the external hard drive.
Great post Lindsey and such great ideas. I love the theme concept. I do something similar at my house:
family pictures in family room; pictures of the girls in their room; vacation shots in the playroom and wedding/me and my husband shots in my scrap space.
I also keep my family scrapbooks out in the family room and encourage us to look at them often.
great idea- totally motivates me to dress my naked walls.
love the last two so much
What a great idea.... mostly because you don't have to be a photographer professional to do it. Most of us have these kids of pictures in our home anyway from documenting our favorite kid moments... and it is amazing what the home editing software (like Picasa) can do..... you hardly need Photoshop any more...
We have a series of pictures in our bathroom of the kids in the tub w/ various bubble hairstyles, I just put the pictures in the cheap IKEA frames that are just a piece of glass that clip to a backing.... you can put a great piece of paper or vintage--looking fabric behind the picture (we show only about 1 inch) to make it cohesive..... but they also look great on their own against a bold colored wall....
We are also fans of shadowboxes mixed in with the pictures (my house is covered with pictures...covered........). It can make a fun landscape and make something pop. When each child came home, we made a shadow box with all the cards people sent as the back ground and a large portrait of the baby's face and christenting gown..... it looks cool).
I am so overwhelmed by this task. You've done a nice job -- and maybe given me some inspiration. Thanks
Love the photos! We have similar themes in our house. In the kitchen I have framed shots of each of my 3 kids playing in the cupboards at approximately the same age. (Funny how they all did this!). The dining room is our gallery; the walls are covered with the kids artwork and some of my own, all framed. The back wall of the living room is a family tree of sorts, all baby and wedding pictures, with my husbands family to the left of the window and my family to the right. The family room is devoted to photos of us and our activities/sports. The stairway has all of my favorite candid shots. The powder room has beach-themed photos.
But my favorite thing has been the upstairs bathroom; the shower curtain is white canvas with iron-transfer photos of my kids in the bathtub at various stages of their childhood, arranged in a free-form bubble pattern. (I got the idea from FamilyFun magazine a few years ago.)
This is turning into a book, but I wanted to add how much I've enjoyed your posts this week.
Such cute pics! Loved the themed idea...I had never thought of the eating pics in the kitchen...love that!
My husband and I love taking pics...one of our favorite displays is a collage my husband framed of random candid pics of us and our children. Another one I framed was of my daughter in her Halloween princess dress and my son on a camping trip, both sleeping, I printed black and white copies and matted them together and they just look like two angels sleeping.
I love black and white photos...Any photos can be framed near one another, on a shelf or together, and they coordinate perfectly.
Wow!! I am loving your comments and ideas, ladies! Keep 'em coming! I'm going to be writing them all down in my notebook. Thanks!
I wanted to add one more thing, I have a very prolific artist in my home and our walls are filled with her art work.... I have a few pictures on my blog (on the cooking post) but we are not in picture taking mode right now.....
I bought a bunch of cheap-o black frames at Target or Voldemart, and I rotate them all the time. It is a great way to store the stuff too. We have wonderful "favorites" that stay up all the time. We mix them in w/ family photos and have them in the hall ways.... great reminder...
Lindsey, I have really enjoyed you posts here at design mom. This idea of themed picture art is awesome. I love it. Thanks for sharing.
Oops, forgot to proof-read that comment. I meant...
I have really enjoyed YOUR posts.
There, fixed it.
Love your pictures, and I am so going to steal the idea of using pictures of kids eating in the kitchen! It's brilliant.
We are a family that moves a lot, so early on I started using black gallery frames with white mats. Every move things get changed up a bit, and the simple frames look good no matter what the picture! We do have some special, more decorative frames in special places, like on the piano.
We have started sticking themed pictures around the house in the rooms, and we do vacations pics of the kids in the bathroom. I don't know why that's were we stick them, but we do.
We use the gallery frames too, so they are all uniform, and just cut different mats if the pics are different sizes.
I like having similar sized frames more than I like having similar sized pics. I used to really be concerned about not mixing black and whites with color photos on the same space, but now I don't care anymore and I think it makes it look more interesting also. The kids love seeing themselves all over the place and the fun things we've done together.
We get frames from Michaels or Roberts with the weekly coupon and paint them if we don't like the color. Not super classy, but cheap and more functional.
I've really liked your posts.
I have in fact done this and you are right - it makes choosing so much easier! Great pictures. Thanks for sharing!
(p.s. I meant overwhelming as in overwhelming to look at such large prints on display...not overwhelming to do!)
Love all the display ideas!
wonderful ideas. especially the ones of eating in the kitchen and cuddling and sleeping in the bedrooms. and your pictures are so cute!
i just display the bulk of mine in a photo collage like i mention in my blog. and then very few frames around the house on shelves and nooks. i'm such a minimalist that i don't like frames and pictures all over the place.
i just read some of the previous comments and that remindes me of an idea that i really like from real simple a few years back. wallpaper photo. there's a company somewhere that makes your photo into wallpaper. it's pretty amazing. so, like a picture of the family at the beach in a kids room. hard to explain, but it was super cool.
Aubrey--
I totally remember reading that on your blog! I had forgotten. Thanks for reminding me. I think I want to do that somewhere around my apartment--maybe in the hallway?
I just learned about Design Mom and have really enjoyed your entries as her guest mom. Your pictures are beautiful and you've inspired me to utilize more of the millions of pictures I've taken of my baby to create themed rooms. As a mother hoping to improve the quality of the numerous pictures I'm taking, I was wondering what camera and film (if you're using film) you use to achieve such great clarity and color. If you could let me know I would really appreciate it. Thanks for all your ideas.
Lindsey, that picture of you is beautiful!
What a great post! I LOVE your blog! It's better than Real Simple. Honest!
I'm all about having the art in your home be personal. From the beginning my husband said, 'No show-home art,' which meant, for a long time, almost no art at all. But now after some living years under our belts we have things on our walls that mean something to us, as well as please the eye.
love the photo display ideas--especially the themes for each room. we have a collection of candid family shots hung pseudo randomly with a few shadow boxes in our living room . . . i love that it's not super formal and that the shadow boxes allow me to display other forms of seasonal art.
Lindsey I absolutely adore your idea for displaying photos in themes for rooms. Oh my gosh. Such a good idea. You are a genius, seriously.
I hereby claim you as my sister. Jk You've always been my Cough faovrite cough sister
Love it.
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