Gallery Gallery On My Wall...

What on Earth is that you wonder? Well...it is a stack/pile of frames I have been collecting while thrifting for some months now. It all started with a little inspiration from one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love. They created this fabulous gallery wall in one of their hallways, and I fell in love with it. I was kind of afraid at first because I am not big on cluttering up walls with things, but this was beautiful and practical. There are so many pictures and sentimental items stuffed in drawers in our house, and by gosh, I wanted to display them. I mean, why have we spent an outrageous amount of money on cruise photos that we have stuck in photo albums that no one ever looks at? Why do we hang onto sentimental items (cards, invitations, letters, etc.) that we never see? They just get stuffed in the "memory box" and stuffed away where we forget we have them. It's crazy to me, so I decided to do something about it. This gallery wall idea was just the answer.

So...I started collecting frames of every shape, size, and color from thrift stores. I ended up with 27 frames in order to cover the two walls I wanted to display items on. Yeah, that is a lot of frames, but since I shopped at thrift stores, and around our house, I only spent about $40 on all of them. FANTASTIC!!!

I just loaded them up in a box in the garage until I had enough. I didn't wait until I had collected all 27 of them to start taking them apart and creating a template for the wall. Whenever I would bring some home, I would take out the matting, glass, back, etc. and store them in a safe pile in our bonus room. I would then make a template for each frame using newspaper.

Each frame was numbered to match a template of newspaper with the same number.

Then, after I had collected all of the frames, I taped all of the templates to the walls in the entryway. This made it easy to move frames around until I liked the arrangement. Once all the templates were up and ready, I got to work with putting nails/holes in the wall. Ugh...I hate putting holes in the walls, but it was all in the name of good decorating! It was really easy to hang each frame because they didn't have to be equally spaced or in a line. I just measured to the middle of each template and then measured down from the top of the frames to figure out where each nail needed to go. Then, I nailed right into the template and pulled them off when I was finished. Believe it or not, it only took me an hour to hang all 27 frames!!! I couldn't believe it myself, easy squeezy. It took A LOT longer to spray paint all the frames...only ONE of them was white!!!

Just for the fun of it, I put the frames (unfinished) on the wall to see what it was going to look like. Oh my gosh...LURVE!!!

Now came the intimidating fun part! What was I going to put in 27 frames? Okay...25 frames (two were mirrors). Even still, the creative juices had to start flowing, and fast. I knew I wanted to display some of our cruise photos, pictures of the boys, some artwork from the boys, and some family photos, but I wanted more spunk...not just pictures. So, I went on a scavenger hunt around the house to find inspiration.

Here is what I came up with...

I found a picture we bought from a street painter on a trip to the Bahamas for our second anniversary, a wedding invitation, a gold key from church, and a postcard from our honeymoon trip stop in Cozumel. Where were all of these lovely things? You guessed it, the "memory box"!

I backed our wedding invitation with scrapbook paper and the key from church. I added the word, forgive, to the key using sticker letters. This key was given to us as a reminder that forgiveness is the key to happiness and a close walk with God. Good stuff!!!

I also made this...

and this...(our wedding date)

I took the letters we found on our second anniversary trip and created this...

I also used some bark that we found on our trip to Hunting Island. I created the "&" print on the handy dandy Hewitt Packard sitting on my desk (FREE).

I continued to scavenger and create for a good 12 hours (geez), and it ended up looking a little something like this...

I cannot possibly express how much I adore it, so I will share some more pictures so you will know how obsessed I am with it!

Looking in from the front door.

 Looking up.

From the living room.

It makes me smile every single time I walk through it. I know we will enjoy this wall for years to come. It will be ever changing so that nothing gets stuck in a box forever and never looked at  enjoyed again.