Our First Gallery Wall! {Or a Winter Pinterest Challenge}

Gallery walls are nothing new. I loved this recent wrap-up Centsational Girl did on the varying types on gallery walls are out there, and I'm sure by now you've seen at least one pin on Pinterest showing you how to use painter's tape to help decide on the placement of your frames before hanging them up. You know, like this one from ItsOverflowing.com:

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I'm slowly trying to work in a few updates to my living room, and I thought it was high time I changed up our biggest wall (sorry for the crappy pictures- some of these are old - don't mind the string hanging down from the ceiling fan either):

Yup - for over four years this wall has housed an off center sepia colored rock on top of a rock.  Thrilling stuff, folks.

Honestly, for the price of this Ikea print, this worked well in the room when I first moved in.  It's a really large wall and was pretty daunting to decorate.  The couch was originally tucked against this wall and it was centered over the couch at that time.  But the couch has had several migrations since, and we have been accumulating some art and photos over the years that didn't really have a place to shine in the rest of the apartment.

And in honor of the Winter Pinterest Challenge, I thought it was time to get on it already.

I'm linking up on these lovely ladies' blogs today - go over and check out their projects plus all of the projects from blogland!

Megan --- Katie --- Sherry --- Michelle

Right - that big a$$ ugly wall.  First - let's look at the wallpaper border that used to run across the entire room at waist height:

I scrapped it off and lived with this ring around the room for over a year. I'm honestly not sure if this was an improvement or not.

Then my landlord finally painted it white for me (but honestly they did a crappy job and I need to bite the bullet and repaint it again).

We are Amazon Prime addicts. (I'm going somewhere with this, trust me.) You know that brown paper that they usually stuff into the box inside of a box? I started saving it.  You know, for wrapping paper, drop cloth paper, and in this case, template paper.

I started with the handful of pictures and art work I knew I wanted to hang up.  I cut out my shapes, and used some painters tape to tape off my nail holes. I hung up the kraft paper on the wall for almost a week, moving them around until I found a layout I thought I liked. What is nice about using the painter's tape and template paper is that I I could easily use my level to make sure everything was straight before I started making nail holes.  I just nailed right into my marks on the tape and ripped the paper away - easy peasy.

I settled on this:

Then I decided it needed more. So I ran out to our local thrift shops and dollar stores, and picked up a bunch of smaller frames. 

I've decided I'm on a gold kick, and I like the texture these brassy gold brick frames bring to the wall.  

The photos on the left are from our wedding - Tom's sister paid an aerial photographer to fly over after the ceremony, and all of our guests formed a huge heart in the yard, what????

The twin towers photo and yellow flower photo were gifts from another talented family member - she took both pictures herself. The trippy painting is actually something my grandmother painted when my mother was a child (explains a lot - haha just kidding mom!!), the portrait is from a cruise we took back in 2009 (yes, I am wearing elbow length gloves with a ring on top, when else can you pull that off but on formal night on a cruise ship), and the black and white drawing is from another amazingly talented family member.  

The canvas of carved miniature elephants is a photo I took on our honeymoon, and the butterflies Tom purchased after we both read a book we loved called Special Topics in Calamity Physics (really great who-done-it). 

The right side are photos from our engagement photo shoot, we bounced around the city back in May and this is the first time we've displayed any of them around the house.

The top is actually the leftover glitter wrapping paper, rhinestone ribbon, and fun gold bow from another very special gift we received at our wedding - a handmade quilt with many, many participants from both sides of our family.  It's a little quirky, a little Liberace, but I think it's small enough and far enough up on the wall that it's not all IN YO FACE.  I like it.

I have another idea for a hand made project for the top left corner, but it might have to wait until after tax season. I'm definitely happy where the wall is now, but wouldn't be opposed to it growing organically with a few more pieces on either side, or even possibly swapping out some of the photos from time to time. It's definitely a little couplethatjustgotmarriedandhaswaytoomanyphotosofthemselvesfromthepastyear-feeling right now, but I'm sure we will accumulate more art as time goes by to even things out.

Have you jumped on the gallery wall bandwagon?  I think this is just one of those classic looks that will always be popular, be it on a statement wall or in a long hallway.  

Don't forget to check out the rest of the Pinterest Challenge projects - I'm looking forward to finding more pinspiration for the spring challenge! 

Megan --- Katie --- Sherry --- Michelle