Thinking outside the box with photo displays

Several people have asked about my different photo displays lately so I thought I'd break it down a little. The one thing I always told myself was worth spending money on in life is good photos! So thanks to a lot of family/friends over the years (Jill, Val, Emmie, Jamie) we've gotten a lot of awesome pics of us and the kids so I wanna see them! There is no better way to make my home feel like mine than personal photos everywhere. But I think the standard just hanging posed pics on the wall is way too boring so I try to think outside the box and have fun with some photo displays. It's tricky to display tons of photos but still make things feel un-cluttered and streamline. But here's what I've done!

I always get questions about the photos above our TV. Our great friend Jill is an amazing photographer and we were lucky enough to get her to do our last family photos!! You can check her out here! I wanted to use some pics from the shoot to make a big statement in the room. I love, love, love canvas but it can get so pricey. I did a DIY canvas project in our last boys room here. With these pics I wanted them really big so I opted for foam board.

I got one piece of foam board at Joanns for like 3 dollars. Then I took the CD from our photo shoot to Kinkos, had them pull up the photos I wanted and blow them up to a 20x20 size. Then I had them printed on regular paper. At that size they have to use their really big machine so it got pricey. It was 20 dollars a piece. So I spent about 65.00 dollars for everything for all 3- when I looked online-- ONE mounted print this size can run you up to 500.00!! Craziness. Obviously the quality isn't the same, but for a similar effect, I'm totally happy. Seeing my little guys face BEAM when he walked down in the morning and saw a life-size photo of him on the wall was worth everything and then some!

Next up is this photo collage! I got the center picture for Christmas and was so excited about it until I hung it up and realized how small it was in the space, I knew I had to come up with something. I could do your standard framed photo collage like you see in all the magazines but when I started looking through all our pictures from over the years I realized there are sooo many fun pictures, memories etc. that I want to SEE. I don't want them just sitting in a box or stored on the computer somewhere. So I went through every photo CD we've had from when the boys were newborns until now. I had soo much fun looking through pictures of the boys as babies, or fun family vacations we took. It was hard to narrow it down- even to this many pics! But I picked ones that had special meaning or brought back certain memories. I got them all printed at Costco and varied the borders- some without any border, some with a thin white border, some thick.

I laid everything on the floor and Paul and I decided together which photos would make it on the wall. Again- so fun to look through and re-live all the memories together. I also thought it would be fun and add visual interest to include all our names in the collage. So I just bought letters at a craft store and adhered coordinating scrapbooking paper to them. For the names I used left over foam-board and stickers in a font I liked-simple, but love that it makes it personal.

I put all the photos on the wall with just that blue sticky-tac you can get at any office supply store. I love this too because it is soo easy to switch out or rearrange pictures as time passes without putting different holes all over. I added a few little frames I've had forever from the target dollar bins (and i've finally gotten them to hang straight :) Overall I probably spent 20 bucks for this- to print the pics, sticky tac, letters, scrapbooking paper etc. I love that we are all CENTERED ON CHRIST! It's probably one of my very favorite projects ever and it is a great conversation piece!

By now we all know about the life of this family tree and I did a post about it here

And this magnet board was a lot of fun back in the day- I did a post about it here -so nice to put all those random letters to use. This is where I put pics of friends and family- after I get everyones Christmas cards, I cut out their pictures and put them here and then they get updated every year with new Christmas cards! Love it!

**Linkin up at the DIY Showoff! (button on the left margin)
** Linkin up at The Inspired Rooms Gallery Wall Party!