How to Properly Hang Larger Pictures and Artwork

Sherry Tyra: Hi! I am Sherry Tyra. Welcome to low-cost artwork on monkeysee.

com. Now, we have created wonderful pieces of artwork; you have used your creativity, your imagination; you have come up with some great pieces. We have talked about hanging smaller pieces on the wall. Now, we are going to talk about hanging large pieces of artwork. One thing I did not touch on is where to find frames.

Now, frames can be extremely expensive, custom frames very expensive; but what I like to do is look to discount stores and look for sales to find frame. Another good place is garage sale, thrift shop, you can find beautiful frames that maybe have some discolored, outdated artwork in them, but just remove the artwork and use the frame. Do not look at the whole picture when you go into a thrift shop; look at just the frame and think about what you can do with it. A lot of frames may have a strange finish on them, maybe they are old, they are discolored, they are worn away, you could paint them black, white, you can use the hammered spray paint. That works great on frames as well the metallic -- great ways to finish frames and make them reusable, great for the environment because you are reusing products over again. Anyway, let us talk about these large frames. It is not good to hang a very large frame from one center point because the weight of the frame will pull; on that, the gravity will cause the frame to pull and it will start pulling apart at the joints. So, on large pieces of artwork, what you are going to want to use are these little tabs called D-Rings. These actually are not in the shape of Ds; these are in the shape of triangles, but a lot of them look like a D, hence the name D-hooks. When you put these into your frame, they screw in and this is where we get down to my favorite tool of all time, the thrift shop, at the dollar store, icepick. This icepick literally cost me a dollar and I have used it for years and years and years. It is favorite tool in my tool box.

What you do is you decide, when you use these hooks, where your little screws are going to go in and it is hard to get those screws started. So you use your ice pick, you use the hammer, you hit it a couple of times, kind of gently because you do not want to break the frame, but hit it a couple of times just to put a little indent in the edge of the frame and then that way you can get those screws started. Trying to hang these D-Rings, it is really difficult, because you have to have your mark exactly, the perfect distance apart on the wall, so that your hooks are at the perfect distance to grab into these little D-Rings. So I have a trick for that. What I do is I take painter's tape; you can use masking tape as well. If you have light walls, painters tape works better because you can see it really well. If it is dark wall, the masking tape works a little bit better because it is lighter and that shows up there is more contrast. So, what I do is I just take a piece of tape and I put it across the frame and because it is low adhesion, it is going to pull up without rubbing the paper; do not stretch the tape, just lightly lay it down on the frame and then you take your pencil and you mark the center point of these little hooks. Hold the tape off and what you do is you cut it exactly where these marks are, like that, like that. Now, what you have now, the perfect measurement of the distance between these two hooks and you can transfer this onto the wall. Well, there you have it.

That is my video on low-cost artwork; I hope you have learnt some fun, exciting tips and you are ready to translate that into your own life. Thanks for joining me; I hope to see you again on my next monkeysee.

com video. Have a great day.