Family Gallery Wall

I have put together a few gallery walls throughout our home but my latest is by far my favorite because it is my Family Gallery Wall.  We have a gallery wall of photos my husband and I have taken in our entryway.  We have a gallery of small pieces of art we have collected while traveling in our first floor bathroom.  But this wall is tucked away upstairs in the hallway between the bedrooms and is full of fun family photos and memories.  This gallery wall is just for us.

In addition to showing off my new favorite spot in our home I also wanted to use this post to show you a great secret I picked up for creating and hanging art for your very own gallery wall.  The first step is to collect your items, duh!  I have been gathering everything together for about a month.  As I found something I would just add it to the layout on the floor of my craft room.  I scavenged for unused black frames from what I already owned and framed things as I went.

In addition to the black frames I wanted to create some type of color theme so I added blue and red to the black theme.

Once I was happy with the collection (and had bought a few more frames at Michael's) I finalized the layout.  All I had to do was move things around on the floor until I was happy.

The next step and the true secret to gallery wall success I stole from John at Young House Love.  He is brilliantly detailed and although sometimes crazy he always comes up with schemes to get stuff done.  So collect some newspaper or used paper and make a paper cut-out the size of each frame.  Then you mark with an X the spot where the frame is hung.  Tape all the cut-outs onto the wall and move them around until they are just right.

  

Once everything is in place you put a nail through the X on the paper, tare off the paper and hang the pic in that spot.  No measuring, just go for it.  Seriously, it is that easy!  And as always, 15 minutes of extra prep saved me an hour of frustration later.  My old boss used to always say "pay now or pay later".  I hate it when other people are right!

So in the end I created this beautiful gallery wall for $32.  (I needed 9 more frames.  I found a 25% off coupon at http://www.michaels.com/ and all frames were on sale for 40% off so I got all my frames for 65% off!)  I love how I was able to use a usually forgotten wall and now it is in an intimate space for my personal favorite memories.