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DIY Chicken Wire Gallery Wall Frames

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This project is indeed one born from necessity. One, I’m sick of my fridge being covered in photos. Two, picture frames are crazy expensive! We recently added four Ana White $10 ledges to our living room and I wanted a way to display all of my photos. It needed to be low-cost and I needed to be able to switch out my photos easily.

Chicken Wire Gallery Frames

I started with 3 barn wood frames from Hobby Lobby (purchased during a 50% off sale). I also picked up a roll of 1 inch chicken wire at Lowe’s. I bought a whole roll so I can use the rest to keep the chickens from digging up the garden beds and unearthing my Mulberry trees to dust bathe. The wire is super shiny silver so dug out a few cans of spray paint.

If you want to make your own frames you will need:

  • Wooden frames
  • Chicken Wire
  • Spray paint (optional, I used Brown, Black and Hammered Copper)
  • Wire Cutters
  • Heavy duty stapler (your swingline isn’t gonna cut it!)

Start out by rolling out your chicken wire. Lay out your frames so you know how much wire you need to paint and cut off the end piece.

Chicken Wire Frames Tutorial

Spray painting chicken wire isn’t as easy as it might seem; I recommend using lots of paint, time and not worrying about a little silver peaking through. I used a piece of extra wire to hook the chicken wire rectangle to my clothes line and a piece of wood to weigh down the bottom so it was hanging. Chicken wire is apparently invisible in the mid day sun so instead of showing you a photo of my lawn I’ll show you my spray paint:

spray-paint

I have no idea what happend to the black paint, I do know my husband was involved. Several slow passes with the brown paint covered most of the wire, I randomly lightly misted with the black and copper spray paints to add some age and then added a few patches of more solid black and copper. It was really sunny out and I couldn’t really see what I was doing so I just went with it and hoped for the best.

Lay your first frame face down, start by stapling in a corner and work your way around. It’s pretty easy to warp the chicken wire so gently pull it taught and continue to staple. It can be tricky and there is a bit of a learning curve to stapling hex wire (we learned that when fixing up our “witness protection program”.

clipped-and-stapled

After stapling use your wire cutters to clip the wire around the entire frame. Good cutters are worth their weight in gold. Our came from Lowe’s, they didn’t cost a lot more than a regular pair (under $20) but they make cutting so much easier. I stapled, then cut because the wire has a tendency to shift and once you cut it too small you have to start over.

stapled

Repeat with the other frames. The small frame holds one or two pictures, the larger ones can each hold over a dozen depending on size. I used miniature clothes pins to hold my pictures up, I’m not 100% in love with the mini clips yet, I might give a few a quick stain to darken up the color similar to the shelves.

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  5. Sue says

    Hi. This is so clever, I pinned it too. I had thoughts how this could be used outside in the garden and/or hanging on the house too to display ornaments.

  7. Claire @ A Little Claireification says

    Thanks again for sharing this at our “Best Of The Weekend” party! I love it!! I am featuring it tonight when the party goes live at 8PM EST so be sure to pop over and grab a “featured” button from my side bar when you get a chance and we hope to see you back at another party again soon. 🙂
    Have a great weekend!
    xoxo

  9. brett says

    those are very cute. my 4 year old is looking with me and wants to put thse frames in our chicken coop (that we don’t have yet)

  10. Elizabeth Towns says

    This is the kind of project my dad would have done when he was alive. From the time I was young he would bring projects like this for us to do on weekends and they always resulted in great additions to our home decor! I love this

  25. Lexie Lane says

    Now that’s what I call creativity! I never would have thought to use chicken wire for anything! Hope it’s clean of chicken “stuff.” 🙂 (I’m a total germaphobe)

  26. Amanda Love says

    What an ingenious way to use chicken wire. Don’t think I’ll have the patience to do this though. I’d rather just run out and buy a cheap 99 cent frame at the dollar store.