Living room wall decorating

Our house has a completely open layout and huge windows, which means there isn't a lot of wall space.  There is one wall in the living room.  I wrote about the piece I have on the wall here.   There's the gigantic TV and the quilt above it and that was it until now.

I got a huge painting from my grandmother that needs to go on the wall next to the TV.  In an effort to balance out the big painting that will go one side, I've been working on a collage of pictures for the right side of the TV.  I started with a painting that Hubby got me for Christmas 2 years ago and worked out from there.  I've tried wall collages before and they never look quite right, plus they are a pain.  So much measuring and so much frustration.  Then I read the most wonderful tip.  I'd link to the original source, but I can't find it.  The tip is to cut out templates the size of each of your pictures and then use painters tape to put them up on the wall.  I marked the location of the mounting hardware on the template.  When you get the templates in the right spot, you nail through the template where you marked the mounting hardware.  There's no measuring and no frustration!

 Here is the collage in progress.  you can see two of the paper templates still on the wall.  I used paper grocery bags and taped pieces together when I needed a big one.

Here is the finished collage with the quilt and the TV.  I ended up switching the two bottom pictures after I looked at it for a few hours.

I auditioned a few different pictures before I settled on the ones I hung.

I keep a portfolio of things I've collected over the years that need to be framed.  I buy frames when I find them cheap and then fill them with stuff from the portfolio.  If you need to custom frame an item, it's much cheaper to use a pre-made frame and get the matte cut to fit.  From this collection, I only ended up using the top two pieces on the left and one of the Target clearance frames on the bottom.  I changed out the frame on the piece in the gold frame on the right and put it on the mantle.

Soon I'll show you the neat trick I used on the image I put in the clearance frame.