Gallery Wall

Nothing like a party to give you the motivation you need to finally personalize your house. I'm having a party later this week (we'll talk about that in another post) and I wanted things to look a little better around here instead of just looking like I live in my in-laws (very nice) house so I started with a gallery wall.

Lets talk about the individual pieces and then I'll show you how we hung this baby. 

When Eden was first born we had some photos taken and most of the pictures come from there. Eden and Catie, and Me and Eden both come from that photo shoot. The emerald frame is a sketch we had done at Chucky Cheese shortly after we started dating, so it's 5 years old.  I painted the canvas using my Silhouette and some vinyl to make a template. 

I love the way this large family photo turned out for a couple reasons. One, the frame. I bought it ages ago and planned on painting it and turning it into a chalkboard for Catie. The longer I waited the more I didn't want to make one at all, I was pretty sure it would be messy and Catie isn't really a colouring type so I think she'd use it once or twice and be done. I pulled it out for this with visions of painting it but the more I looked at it the more I loved the gold. That inspired me to incorporate the gold in other pieces as well and I'm so pleased I did.

Reason two. Let me show you what this photo originally looked like.  This photo shoot was done by an amazing photographer but it was a quick mini shoot.  The backdrop of the duvet worked great in all the other photos but none of us thought to fix the backdrop for the family pic.  I just wasn't happy with the background.

Brad is amazing and worked some photoshop magic and now our photo is useable. 

I do want to get some glass for the frame, I think it would look a little more polished. 

Below it is the I love us picture. I had made it as a printable but because of its random size it was going to be difficult to have printed so instead I cut the letters and shapes on my Silhouette and then pasted them onto posterboard.  Same result for easier and cheaper. 

The wedding photo is pretty self explanatory, though it really needs to be reprinted with more space at the top, at night with the shadows you get a nice view of our chins. The photo of Catie is one I took and love the way it turned out. 

Here's a fact about me you may not know, I am really good at recreating someone else's idea but coming up with my own is not my forte.  You've probably seen this print on Pinterest, I had too and loved it some recreated it and printed it off. 

I saved my favourite piece for last. A simple W I gave to my I laws years ago. I took it off the wall and painted it cream (they can have mine when I find it in storage, it's the same as their original). I hung it up and it looked so boring. Brad had the great idea to paint the edges gold so I did and loved it but it still wasn't enough, it didn't pop. So I added the stencil that wraps around the edge and now I love this piece. It really adds interest to the whole piece. 

So now how this came together. I started by laying out my frames on the floor, notice my lovely drawings of the pictures I wanted to use?  It was here that the gold really started to grow on me. 

Now this wall is directly above the stairs so hanging it was tricky. 

To make it easier we payed our frames down on a very large piece of paper and made sure everything was level, the. It raced around each frame and then moved them. I cut out each square so we had a large paper with holes cut out. Then we hung the paper up on our wall. We could hang it on either side without it being to awkward because the sides were easy to reach. Then we pulled out the ladder, it leaned against the wall with the legs wedged between the rails of the stairs. Then Brad climbed up, I handed him a photo that was prepped with 3M hooks and he placed it on the wall in the hole we'd previously cut. There was no measuring or levelling, just pasting it up. The. We pulled down the paper and were done. 

Brad said he was pretty secure on the ladder until he looked down :)

There was definitely no way I was going up there. This wall is right across from the kitchen so every time I stand at the sink I get to stare at the wall.