My Photo Gallery Wall!

One of the first things people notice when they come over to our house is our gallery wall.  Everyone loves it and I often get asked how I did it.  Well, I had always wanted a gallery wall and when we moved into our new house over a year ago, I decided to empty all my frames and use them to make a huge collage.  As you can see in the above photo most of the frames are black and 3 are brown which ended up looking great with our kitchen table and chairs.

So this is how I did it:

I searched and searched the internet for ideas on how to design the wall.  What I found was that the designs that caught my eye were the ones that had a "random" look to them.  But...of course there's nothing random about it...at all!  

The other thing I noticed was the shape, personally I think this is what works best.  Start at the top and work your way gradually down each side as I've drawn in this photo:

You don't need to have your highest frame in the middle of the wall, in fact, I like the look better if you don't.

Once I had decided the look I wanted I emptied each frame and washed and dried the glass of each one to really show off the photos (btw...aren't my kids awesome!).  Then I took the matte out of each one and used blue sticky tack (from the dollar store) to place them on the wall.

The blue sticky tack worked great because then I could move the paper around until I was happy with it and without leaving any marks on the wall.

Now I know the matte's aren't exactly the same size of the frame but they were close enough for me to get an idea of the placements.  Then you hammer in the nail and voila.  

TIP: Put sticky tack on the back of your frames so that they really hold on to the wall and you won't have your frames going all diagonal on you.  You only need a little bit...(see photo below).

The hardest part for me was actually choosing the photos I wanted to put up.  In fact, I'm embarrassed to tell you that I had empty frames up for a year and it was only this past Christmas that I decided to give myself the gift of filling those frames!  

You can see all my empty frames in the photo below! (sheepish grin)

And just so we end this post on a high, here is my completed wall again:

Do you have a gallery wall that you'd like to share?  Send me a link! :)

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