Foster Care Visitation Room: Art Wall

After painting, the second biggest step in the Foster Care Visitation Room was installing the art wall. Thankfully, my handy, trusty husband B helped me this past weekend and we got a pretty good start. The first step was to lay out all of the pieces and take inventory.

I took some tips from this episode of Secrets from a Stylist and cut out the shapes of each frame using kraft paper. I labeled each piece of paper with the corresponding art work so that I could not only get the shapes where I wanted them but so that I could organize the frames by color and print. 

I wanted an art wall that was semi close together so I decided for a 2" space around all of the pieces. It felt like I was doing a brain teaser trying to make everything fit without it being too "perfect", but I eventually figured it out. The great thing about paper and painter's tape is that you can take as long as you want without nailing a bunch of holes and throwing a hammer in frustration (oh wait, am I the only one who's been THERE?)

B was a little skeptical of the amount of time I took arranging the art wall, but once he started hanging and realized it was a breeze, I think he appreciated my preparations (ok, I might be putting words into his mouth here, but I do want to point out that there was no cursing or throwing of hammers). 

We decided to build the wall clock into the art wall because seeing as how this is a visitation room, I really didn't want the clock to be the main focus. Some of these families only see each other 1 hour every week or two and I'm sure they don't want to be constantly reminded of the time. This way, if you need the time, you have to search for it. 

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough hardware to hang all of the pieces so we'll have to finish it up later. You might spy some familiar artists on the wall like MadeByGirl, city.light photography and Flapperdoodle, all of whom donated to the room. The bottom print is by Nan Lawson and I donated it to the room because the colors worked so damn well, don't you think? The art wall wasn't the only project we completed in this room (I mean, I was doing stuff while B was working), but more on that later. What do you think of the progress so far?