I'm finally ready to share my gallery wall with you! It's still a work in progress, but for now I LOVE it!
First, here it is BEFORE:
Nothing really wrong with it...but I never really loved it.
I didn't like that large black frame with all the wedding photos in it...and I was sick of black frames. Our house is filled with black frames. Plus this gallery didn't really use the space properly.
So, to begin I took all of the frames down and nails out. I have been gathering frames up for a long time to use on this project. I then made a paper template to fit the size of each frame I was planning to use. I thought this would take forever but really it was surprisingly fast!
The paper templates made it is SO easy to move the "frames" around and play with the layout. I just used painters tape and experimented with different layouts until I found one that I liked. I had two goals: 1. to try to cover up all of the previously existing nails holes with a new frame so I wouldn't have to patch and re-paint and 2. to keep the "R" where it originally was. It was a pain to put up and I didn't want to mess with it again!
I also numbered each frame and then put the corresponding number on the template so that I wouldn't confuse which frame belonged where. Then, once I had decided on my layout I placed the template against the frame and used a pen to mark where the nail should go. I did each frame one by one, making sure to tape it back on the wall in the correct place. Then I simply put a nail over each mark. SO easy and it requires zero guess work and measuring!
Then I hung the frames! You can see I used some old frames mixed with some new.
Seeing this picture makes me sort of like the mix of black with white frames. The wall looked like this for several days while I tried to decide if I liked the "mix" or if I wanted to stick to my original plan and paint all of the frames white. My mom voted to keep the mix. My husband didn't care. So I figured I might as well paint everything white...it is an easy switch back to black if I change my mind down the road.
And here it is! I added two frames into the layout last minute. And I kept the "R" black...but am still on the fence about what color it should be. I kind of like it in black.
Here is the view from the kitchen entry. (please ignore my dark hallway with zero natural light)
And the view from our front door.
One of my favorite wedding photos didn't fit in the mat I purchased so I improvised by backing it in burlap!
I've always wanted to display this photo of baby Wrigley, taken by our
wedding photographers the year after our wedding. And I just had to use the cat print on the top right. I purchased it after Pancake died because it looked so much like him and Henry. I'm so glad it finally has a place on our wall! And that old postcard is from Long Beach, where I grew up. It was my mom's (and so was the frame!) and I told her I really liked it so she gave it to me. She's the best.
Erin and I found that ampersand at Hobby Lobby. It was painted rusty red and had a base to stand it upright...so we talked the husband in to sawing it off for us and then we painted it white and roughed it up a bit. It can be seen in the annual photos she took of us for this gallery wall and for our Christmas cards!
I love the mix of photos and non-photos. This is just a greeting card my mom and I found that I fell in love with one day while shopping.
Top left and bottom right photos were taken by Erin and I love them! The bottom right is also backed in burlap.
I'm so happy with how it turned out. Now I want to make another one going up the stairs....eventually I'll get to it!
p.s. I'm just know noticing there are a ton of photos of Wrigley on this wall. No, we are not crazy dog people....he's just so photogenic and we don't have kids, so why not?
