3 Picture-hanging tips

My recent decorating spree has included finally hanging pictures on my walls and moving some existing pictures around. Hanging pictures doesn't seem like too complicated of a DIY endeavor, but for some reason it always seems to go a bit pear-shaped for me. I hate making extra holes in my walls, because that means filling them and touching up the paint, which means multiple trips to the basement, and I'm just lazy. We do actually own a laser level, which I have never ever used because we have no idea how and have lost the instruction manual. For crying out loud.

Anyway, I found a couple of tips that made things easier for me so I thought I'd share. One involves a very high-tech tool:

I used this little trick on a grouping of three silhouettes that I hung in my front room. Instead of measuring and marking for all three, I simply placed a tiny dot of toothpaste on the sawtooth hanger and pressed the frame up against the wall where I wanted to hang it. The toothpaste left a tiny mark on the wall where the hanger touched it. I hammered in the nail, wiped off the remaining toothpaste, and was done!

I'm sorry, I just have to add this wherever I can because would you just LOOK at those sweet curls on Porter?

Another tip involves larger frames. I recently had some family portraits blown up and put into large, heavy frames that I purchased at Michael's. The frames came with two rings on the back for hanging. I knew that would be a hassle, because now I had to get two nail holes properly spaced and level for each picture frame, and that was assuming both hooks were installed evenly on the frame itself. I was talking about this to a friend, and she suggested that I use the hooks to install picture wire instead.

I'm so thankful to have clever friends! I just so happened to have picture hanging wire in my stash, so it took no time at all to convert the frames.

Because the toothpaste method doesn't really work on frames with picture wire, I use this slightly more high-tech tool instead:

This is called the Picture Placer. I bought mine on clearance at Target or JoAnn's or something a few years ago and it's meant for hanging large pieces that use a picture wire.

This is what it looks like out of the packaging. You place that center piece in the top middle of the frame, and then hang the wire in a little groove on top of the round piece on the bottom and pull the arm up tight until the wire is taut. The little round piece has a tiny point on the back, so when you press the whole contraption up against the wall where you want the picture to be, the little point makes a small divot in your drywall, which shows you exactly where to place your nail! It really is ingenious and works every time.

For smaller frames without wires, you could use this clever homemade tool that is floating around Pinterest:

Pinned here, Original Source: http://mmscrapshoppe.blogspot.com/2011/07/picture-frame-hanging-tip.html

It uses the same principle as the Picture Placer tool. The hardest part would be getting the nail straight through the clothespin!

Do you have any helpful tips for hanging pictures right the first time?