How To Easily Hang a Gallery Wall

If you're like me (and what seems like every person on Pinterest), you love a good gallery wall.

It's a great way to display a ton of pictures and create a focal point for a room.

And if you're also like me, hanging pictures in general can be a pain in the butt. I've marked a wall with a pencil for where I want my picture to go, and then when I go to hang it, it's not quite where I thought I'd like it, so I end up putting another hole in the wall.

This gets astronomically more difficult when you're doing a gallery wall.

Through all of my Pinterest searching, along with using a few of my own brain cells, I've figured out a way to do it so that it's pretty much error-proof, and really easy.

You'll need the following: 
newspaper, scissors, a pen, the nail you're using to hang your pictures,
and a hammer. 
Duh.

Step 1. Lay out the pictures somewhere, so that you can get an idea of what you want the layout to look like, where each frame/picture should go, etc. I did mine on the floor. (You can even take a picture of it to jog your memory when you go to put it on the wall).

Step 2. Cut out outlines of the pictures/frames that you want to use.

Most online tutorials say to use butcher paper, but most people don't have that laying around the house (at least, I didn't!) What most people do have, though, is newspaper!

I outlined mine in pen and then cut out with scissors.

Step 3. (and this is the genius part if I do say so myself)

Line the newspaper up with the back of the frame. By touch, find the spot where the nail hanger/hook is. Use a nail and poke through the newspaper at this spot. Now you know where to put your nail once you've hung it on the wall!

NOTE: when you put the newspaper on the wall, the side that you were looking at (when finding the hole) will be the side that faces the wall--otherwise your nails might not align if your hanger isn't dead center to your frame. 

Step 4. Hang the newspaper outlines on the wall (remembering to put the newspaper on the wall the correct way). 

Notice how this is the other side of the newspaper. NOT the side that I was looking at when I poked the hole through the newspaper.

Tape the edges to the wall, then take a step back and check that you like the layout. If you don't like it, now is the time to move it around.

I like this because it gives you the opportunity to get a perspective without having to ask someone else or  juggle a million frames at once.

Step 5. With the newspaper outlines still taped on the wall, hammer the nails into the wall in the little hole that you poked through the newspaper earlier.

Step 6. Pull the newspapers down off of the wall and hang your photos/frames on the nails left behind.

Voila! You have a beautiful gallery wall, with only the holes in the wall that you needed to hang everything--no extras!

I've since started doing this to hang single frames or multiple--it makes it SO much easier to line things up, or get juuuuust the right placement before putting that nail into the wall.

Happy hanging!!