It Takes Time to Build a Gallery Wall

I had one many years ago.

This is from 2001, back when I took photos with people in them!

(Such cuties, my boys.)

I was so proud of that wall!

But what a hodge podge. And everything is crooked, too. As they tended to get --and stay-- with a three year old underfoot and a baby in my arms.

Jump ahead 10 years. To now. I'd been considering a gallery wall for about a year. Finally, inspiration came from a collection of prints and frames I found at Walmart.

Yes. Walmart. That mecca of fine art.

I had turned my nose up at Ikea's offerrings. Large canvases and Home Sense weren't good enough for me either.

But, I saw these while shopping for socks, and I realised that I'd buy each and every single piece if I'd found them at Value Village. So, I decided to just skip the middle man (or woman!) and buy them first.

(I thought I had a picture of the pieces in their original layout in their box. I don't. It would go here if I did. Trust me, though. It was hip.)

I had a direction, a colour scheme and a theme: black frames, silver and aqua, and anything related to the garden.

I kept shopping, of course, and the Internet hunting escalated in the pursuit of inexpensive art prints.

I snooped around at The Graphics Fairy. There's simply an outrageous amount of material there. I spent days looking at things, saving things.

I continued to scour the internet for more images.


I found this (and others) courtesy of the blog A Thoughtful Place. It's a botanical print from an old German book. I cleaned up the image a bit and played about with the colours until I had it the way I wanted.

I created a layout of the wall on the living room floor.

Here was the first option:


I needed to change a few things, though, so I worked on the individual pieces. You may remember, getting two pictures ready was a massive undertaking.

Once I had things more or less the way I wanted them, I did a few more layouts on the floor.


This felt stiff, though. Formal. Lined up. I wanted more of a flow. So, I tried another one.

I loved this one.

A few days before our vacation, I started putting stuff up. I thought it would be great to come home from vacation and have it done.

It would have been.

Instead, in the middle of July, I cam home to this.



On Friday, this is where things stood.


It stayed like this until this weekend.

That's when I decided to let go and let be.
Stay Tuned

PS. The original date of this post was June 17th.