Gallery walls are tricky business, especially for detailed oriented, type-A sort of people--not that I know any of those sort of people, cough, cough. At our previous house my first battle with the gallery wall involved hanging a group of empty picture frames going up the stairs, as a sort of artistic statement. I then decided to replace the empty frames with pictures. From there I switched out some of the older cheap frames, for more high quality frames. However, this meant the spacing was off when I replaced a few of the frames with different sizes. It was a domino affect--I then had to rearrange the whole thing. My husband would find me rearranging the pictures or re-hanging them in the wee hours of the night. It worried him that I just couldn't leave them alone! (see below the first stage of the gallery wall madness).
Round two came when we moved into our current house and I arranged the same frames over our couch in the living room. I arranged the frames first on the carpet all together, eye-balled a good spot on the wall, and then marked the nail holes with a pencil, using a tape measurer. However this was done with two people--one person to hold the frame up on the wall and the other person to eye-ball a good spot. Miraculously the gallery wall seemed to come together on our first attempt.
This luck soon ran out though. Inspired by our gallery wall, my mother-in-law enlisted me to help her hang a group of photographs in black picture frames. We used the same technique--laying out a variety of picture frames on the carpet, and rearranging them to our liking before eye-balling them up on the wall, marking, and hanging them. Alas, what looked good on the carpet didn't seem to transfer to the wall. Chagrined I later called my husband to go over and fix it, which he did, re-hanging a few pictures and replacing others with different frames.
So it was with much trepidation I approached the gallery wall in our second bedroom. A blank canvas can be somewhat overwhelming, and I desperately wanted to avoid peppering the wall with gratuitous nail holes this time.
I decided to take on a different strategy. I traced the outline of picture frames onto some extra supermarket ads to make a hanging template. I also marked the nail holes on the template, so all I had to do was tape the template to the wall, nail through the paper and pull away the paper to hang the pictures. It worked relatively well, although I did end up changing out the top/middle picture frame for a smaller version, after I had already hung the gallery. It's a work in progress. Either that or I used up all my gallery wall luck already.
The items on the gallery wall include a pallet arrow that the husband made. He honestly just looked at a picture and made it, so I don't really have a tutorial. If you need one, I'd recommend the one here at Love Grows Wild.
The second item we made was the swiss cross sign which you can read about here. The other items include photographs from Hawaii, and Oregon, as well as a framed notecard with a quote from Louisa May Alcott, which reads: "I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." Which gives me pause--"Is she speaking to me about persevering with hanging my gallery wall?"
The crocheted animal head, a fox, is from a local craft shop, Wholly Craft. The artist, Taylor Hart who makes them also has an etsy shop. She has other cute animal heads, including a platypus which I found unexpected and charming. I originally planned on including a hanging sign I bought from Three Potato Four in the gallery wall, but then thought the better of it, because it seemed to overwhelm the space. I ended up with just hanging it over the bed. I may change my mind and reincorporate it back into the gallery wall like I originally planned. What do you think? (see below for the original plan).
The gallery wall is "done" for now, which means I might change it up again when I feel like it, or when my husband isn't looking.
Anne with an E