Our Gallery Wall is up - TA-DAAAA!

I finally installed a gallery wall in our living room after 6 months of talking about it.  

I had agonized over every little detail for way too long... the layout of our future gallery wall, frame size, frame color, and about what would go in the frames... finally I'd had enough of talking about it.  It was time for action.  

And so one evening about a month ago, I picked up my hammer and some nails, and went to town... about 15 minutes later, we had a gallery wall.

Almost none of the original frames I'd bought for this project even made it up on the wall.  I'd been thinking black frames across the board, but after buying a few non-black frames, decided to flip this gallery wall on it's head, and spray them all gold.  Rustoleum spray paint to the rescue!

Once the frames were all sprayed and dry, I hung the large vintage print of the sailboat first.  With the largest piece of the puzzle complete it was easy to see where the other frames needed to go, and so I just started nailing up frames around it...



The gallery wall actually needs a few tweaks - in my preview post (the grainy cell phone shot of this wall after I finished it) I mentioned that the left side needed to be evened out.  I've started on that process slowly - replacing the illustrated Paris and London prints with brighter abstract prints that coordinate eerily well with the La Baule sailboat piece.  The left side still needs something else, to make it feel "even" but we're getting there slowly.  Maybe a few more smaller frames will do the trick...

This was how it started...


Not bad by any means, but you can really see how the abstract prints bring some much needed life to the space, and help tie things together...

Kris' least favorite game in the world is the "do you notice anything different" game when he comes home.  His first response is usually... your hair looks really good... is that it?  Did you get your hair done??

A well trained man... but this time, he noticed the gallery wall first.

This wall was VERY blah for a long time with three undersized black and white prints from Ikea - one in a broken frame.  Classy.  Remember how it looked before?

Don't be fooled... this is actually a REALLY good picture of how it looked before.

Here's a better "before":

This makes me realize and really appreciate how far this room has come since we first moved in...

I like that this space has a lot more character, and that there is a lot of color going on.  As much as I admire Restoration Hardware's style, I could never live in a room devoid of color and pattern that way.  I love pieces from their collections, but all tan and white and grey and greige (grey / beige) is not my jam.

Color makes me happy, and so this gallery wall is making me REAL happy.



Another thing I really want to point out here... the blue pillows with the white stitching.  These were a little DIY I did a few months ago.

Do you know where I got the fabric?

Target - the happiest place on earth (next to Disneyland)  The fabric was actually a shower curtain in another life.  That $19.99 shower curtain is now two throw pillow covers in our living room.  And I made them!  Holla!

A little stitch witchery (iron on bonding), and presto-chango.  We've got a pair of inexpensive, vibrant pillow cases, that are summery and fun... and match PERFECTLY with the water in the print (that was totally unintentional since the pillows happened way before the print was hung).

And so that's that... slow changes over time, mean big changes in the end.  I am really happy about my little gallery wall!