Gallery Wall

One of the projects I have been working on lately is this gallery wall in my family room downstairs.  I have so many blank walls downstairs (since it was recently finished) so a lot of my posts lately (and pins on Pinterest) are all about artwork!

It is not finished yet but I thought I would share the results thus far.

It is always easier to create a gallery wall out of blank frames, come up with an arrangement you like then fill them with pictures.  To figure out an arrangement I like to lay out my frames on the floor.  I laid it out right by the wall so that I could visualize it in the space and to see if the scale was good left to right and top to bottom.  Most of my frames I got from ikea, the others were extra's I had waiting in storage for use somewhere.  When I went to ikea I bought tons of different frames just so I had lots to work with when creating an arrangement (you can always return whatever doesn't get used).  I ended up liking a mix of white and brown frames for this space since my walls have a lot of white and the furniture in the room is brown, so it ties it all together.

 Once I had my arrangement figured out it was time to start hanging!  As you can see below I simply take the papers out of the frames (most all frames come with them), mark where the nail holes need to be and then tape the papers up on the wall.  You can see below I started with the pictures in the center then filled in the right side, then the left.  I don't really measure things out to carefully and just go with my eye since it is a gallery wall and has a collected feeling anyway.

Finally once they were all hung I wrote down a list of all the sizes of pictures I needed (and whether they have a horizontal or vertical orientation) then started working on filling them up.

I already had a lot of pictures of my kids on hand so some of the frames were easy to fill, but for the bigger sized frames I needed to find or make something.  Like I said it's still a work in progress but I'm happy with it so far.  Instead of trying to just quickly fill the frames with anything (just to get it done) -I'm trying to patiently wait for inspiration on how to fill the rest of the empty frames so that I end up really loving the way the whole thing comes together.

 This cute Salt Lake City Temple silhouette picture above I found on Etsy (click here for link).  I then uploaded it to costco.com and had it printed.  To learn more about the temple click here.  My numbered hand hooks are from "All that stuff in the Barn" in Midway, Utah.  The picture hanger below is from Rod Works and the painting below was done by my 9 yr. old!

This Family Proclamation Subway art was also found on Etsy (click here for link) and printed out at Costco.  You can customize the color so it works with your decor.  

To learn more about the Proclamation to the Family click here.

The dates picture above I made using Picasa.  I saw something similar on Pinterest and figured it was simple enough for me to make.  The dates are from my wedding anniversary and each of my kids births.  I simply uploaded a blank white image to Picasa then clicked on the "Edit in Creative Kit" button.  I first resized it to 3600x3600 (which is 12x12- since that is the frame size it was going in)  Then using a couple different fonts and colors I typed the info in.  Really simple!  Once it was done I uploaded it to Costco and printed it out.

Once I figure out the rest I'll be sure to share it with you all!