Tuesday, March 27, 2012

March Madness - Gallery Wall

Since moving into our current house I have had the strong desire to put up a gallery wall, due in part to the fact we have some amazing pictures from our little ones first birthday (thanks to the crazy amazing talent of Amy Grebe Photography).  This weekend I decided it was time to get this baby up.  

First off let me just say putting up a gallery wall, NOT EASY!  It was harder than I thought it would be, mainly just configuring the way you want the pictures.  I searched pinterest and several other websites and thought I knew what I wanted.  I tried the whole cut paper and tape it to the wall, but honestly it didn't cut it for this overly visual chickadee...
After seeing all those pieces of paper I finally decided to go about this a different way.  I started by pulling out all the available frames I had, that I wanted to use.  I decided where the middle would be, based on the placement of the couch, and worked my way out from there.  I used the top of the area rug to be sure it would all be straight (the hubby got a good laugh out of that one).  This is what I ended up with...
My little helper came over to supervise my work :).
I had SO MANY frames in boxes, by doing it this way I was able to save money by using what I had.  After I did a little measuring and adjusting it was time to get hanging.  Now measuring this would have been murder, so instead we decided to use wax paper (since we had some on hand :)) to make the a template for the wall.  We ran 2 pieces across the back of the frames (sorry forgot to take a picture before I hung the top piece on the wall, but you get the idea).  We taped the wax paper to the end frames...
 Then it was just a matter of locating all the picture hangers and marking their locations with a pen...
After all the picture hangers had been located, we very carefully taped the wax paper to wall using the center marks as a guide.  We took one of the frames and held it up to the top to be sure we had the height we were looking for...
 Then it was just a matter of hammering nails into all the marks...
Once all the nail had been hammered in we pulled down the wax paper.  We took our pictures we printed at home, put them in the frames, hung them up and viola!  Our gallery wall was complete!
To break up all the pictures we chose one of our favorite songs to put in the frame on the far left and placed a nice big J in the mix...
I have to say I L-O-V-E my gallery wall.  By using the wax paper I didn't have to move a single nail, that's a first for me!  It has added so much to the room and made the big space feel warm.  My total cost for this gallery wall was $6, thanks to the Dollar Tree and the fact that we decided to print our own pictures, which turned out beautifully!

But my favorite part of this whole project, watching our little guy enjoy playing with the wax paper after it came off the wall :)....





Blessings!

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