A Complete Wall FULL of Grandchildren Pictures - How to Make a Giant Wall Collage

So is it just my Mother in Law, or do other grandparents suffer from the "Must put up 1000 pictures of my grandchildren" syndrome??  ;-)

I have a feeling, it's a world wide obsession :-)  I don't even have a lot of my kids' pictures up in my OWN house!

All to say, my MIL loves her pictures but the trick is making all those pictures look good and that's where I'm here to help :-)  All you have to do is follow these 3 simple "rules".

Rule #1.

Buy frames that all have the same finish.  If you already have each picture in a million different types of frames, SPRAY PAINT them so they all match.  This may sound intimidating but I promise, it's not. Just take the pictures and glass out, lay them on a newspaper and spray away.  DONE!

Having your frames relatively match (say like all a darker wood tone), it will take away some of the cluttered feeling from the collage. We don't want clutter - we want to display the 1000 photos in a nice, orderly fashion ;-)

Rule #2.

Once you have 1000 framed pictures - DO NOT ADD MORE,  just switch them out or keep the other photo in the frame, just add the new one over it.  Some day, if you want, you could go back and take out all the old photos to remember when they were little.  (OK and it will make you feel a little less guilty that you are covering up that cute picture of them in the tub, it doesn't matter that they are 15 now, that was a cute tub picture - right!)

Rule #3.

USE THE WAX PAPER METHOD to figure out a great layout for your grandchildren wall collage. As I did this current layout with my friend, she said this, "Selina, there would be NO other way to do this - this is ingenious!"  I wanted to just leave it at that, for her to assume that I was the creator of this absolutely ingenious idea but I had to open my big mouth and let her know that I just found it on the internet.  HA!  Along with almost all my ingenious ideas!   I'm sorry, I am SO not into re-inventing the wheel.

Once you have those three rules in place - you got yourself a beautiful grand kid wall collage.

This is my MIL wall going up the stairs too.

So, who else out there suffers from the Grandchildren (or your own kid) Photo Obsession?  Do you also have to count to be sure each family is covered equally?  I had to tell my MIL I was SURE that non of us were counting.  :-)

Enjoy your day and let me know if you try this out!!