Gallery Wall How-To

Blogs and Pinterest are responsible for the inspiration that has led to about 90% of the decor in our house. My favorite blog I follow is Young House Love, and one of my favorite decor features I've ever seen on the site was the hallway gallery in their last house. It was through reading about how they incorporate non-photo sentimental items into their wall decor that I fell in love with the gallery wall. And now, while not as big as theirs, we have several that live in different rooms in our home, including Lucy's work-in-progress big girl room.

Most of the items on the wall have been transferred from Lucy's nursery, but I've added a little dimension to them by adding in some gold frames to mix in with the white ones. My decor style is constantly evolving, and the more I decorate, the more I find that I like an eclectic mix. All of the frames in this room are thrift finds - a lot of frames can become pretty expensive, so I spend some time shopping around for used ones instead.

When I put together a gallery wall, I usually have one or two items that I know I want framed, and the rest are what I find to fit the frames I've thrifted. If you look closely above, you can see that I still have a few frames that need to be filled; I don't just want to fill them for the sake of filling them, so I'm letting them sit empty for a while as I'm working on other parts of the room.

The first part of my process is to gather all of my frames and start arranging them on the floor until I find one that I like.

I didn't love this arrangement - it seemed a little chaotic and messy. I tried a few other arrangements until it started to look a little more balanced. In the process, I ended up taking out the deer cross stitch and putting it on another wall.

Once I know I have everything set up the way I want it, I flip all of the frames over.

Then, I start to measure. I started here with the cameo (which I centered to where the middle of a twin bed would be on the wall it will be on, once she moves up to a big girl bed).  From there, I measured over, then up to the hanger on the next frame.  I continued measuring from one frame to the next until all of my frames had been accounted for.

As I measure and put finishing nails into the wall, I stop periodically to hang some of the frames and make sure that things are lining up the way I intended. I know there are lots of different ways that people have come up with to hang their art, but as a visual, numbers person, this really seems to work for me.

In the end, it's so satisfying to step back and take a look at the finished product.

And now, a breakdown of where everything came from:

White mirror: thrifted and repainted

Ich liebe dich cross stitch with whale (both of our families have German heritage and Eric's mom was a German teacher): Made by me with a combination of these two patterns (ich liebe dich & whale)

"We love you because" print: I created this really easily in Picmonkey - We use a dry erase marker to switch up the reason from time to time.

Gold frames: thrifted, just waiting for art

Life is a bicycle ride: free print from irocksowhat

Cameo: see how I created it here

L is for Lucy print: free and customizable from on to baby

Fabric flower art: I made the flowers from a fat quarter and glued them onto a piece of scrapbooking paper

German shepherd cross stitch: Made by me with this pattern

Rose gold mirror: thrifted and repainted

Bicycle cross stitch: Made by me with this pattern

3D flower tacks: Umbra, bought at BB&B

The good news now is that I'm about 90% finished with Lucy's new room. I'm getting really anxious to finish it up, so keep an eye out for the rest of the details to come.