Location, location, location

Just like in real estate, location is everything when it comes to hanging things on the walls.  Get it wrong and it looks like your 5 year old decorated your home. So how do you get it right? Templates. Keep in mind this is going to take you a little extra time, but the result will be worth it.

All you have to do is take whatever object you are hanging on the wall and trace it with craft paper, or if you are feeling festive and have some lying around, wrapping paper. The other thing you'll want to do is mark where the hanging points on the paper.  That way, once you get the placement right, you can put the nails in over the paper templates thereby getting exactly the same placement as the template. this comes in handy when you are wanting to hang something in a grid or straight line and your frames don't have exactly the same hanging points.

In this case, I was hanging a scattering of barn stars above my bed and wanted to make sure I got the "Oh, I just randomly threw those up on the wall.  Don't they look fabulous? There was no effort at all" look.  Here are all the paper stars hung up with tape.

Paper Stars

Once I got the placement right, I hammered in the nails, ripped down the paper stars and hung the actual stars.

Actual Stars

That's it! It seems like a little more work, but it's so much easier to move tape than nails if you get it wrong the first time around and you can really play around with it to get the exact look you want.

Cheers!