How To Create A Gallery Wall

Audrey’s room has been in it’s incomplete state for well over a year. This seems to be a theme in my life – this starting and not finishing projects around the house – and I’m determined to wrap a few up.  I’ve been collecting art for her room and knew a gallery wall was in order. I finally put it together and I am IN LOVE with how it turned out.

I’ll show you the final wall at the end (it’s super cute!), but I wanted to walk you through my process for creating a gallery wall.

First things first, collect art and frames.

I don’t know why we have so many frames laying around our house, but in this moment I was thankful for the abundant supply.  For Audrey’s room, I chose to do a combination of white, gold and black frames. I like a simple frame and while you can definitely do all matching frames, I find it more interesting to have a mix. Here’s an example of mixed frames from our Wall of L’s. All of the frames I used were from Target, Minted or IKEA, with exception of the vintage gold frames from my grandmother.

As for art, I’ve been collecting favorites for about a year, waiting to put them all together in a gallery. I’ll highlight my exact art below. When choosing art, try to keep to a similar color story and feel. Varying artists, sizes, mediums, dimension is great because it adds interest to your wall. And don’t forget to add in a few photos, too.

Next up is gathering the tools. Here’s the thing about me and hanging pictures: I’m not afraid of an extra hole in the wall. Which basically means, I eyeball it and if I mess up, I just pop in another hole. Therefore, a ruler, level and tape measure do not make it into my list of tools. If this is just too much for you, go ahead and add a measuring device to the list of tools.

A few notes:

* Poster Putty. Remember this stuff? It used to be blue and it held up a lot of magazine tear outs on my bedroom wall in my high school days). It now comes in white and is great for tacking up paper, photos and I even put a little ball under the bottom corners of frames to keep them from getting knocked around and crooked.

* Washi Tape. Super cute to use as an embellishment on frames or to hang photos/little notes (tip: you may need poster putty to secure them first and then add tape – it doesn’t hold well on it’s own).

* 3M Velcro Strips. Great for picture frames that don’t have hooks (like the vintage ones I used) and also if you want to avoid nail holes in your walls.

* Picture Hooks. These little ingenious things just poke into the sheetrock and use leverage so you don’t need wall anchors.

* Small Nails. Unless the art I’m hanging is super heavy, I just hang it with a small nail.

* Hammer. This fancy one was invented by Ryan’s uncle. It’s the most handsome hammer in all the land. If you need a gift idea for a man in your life, here are a few for sale.

* Pencil. For marking where to pop in the nail.

So once you’ve got your artwork and frames selected and your tools gathered, it’s time to layout your art.

I start by laying it all out on the floor so I can see each piece and the sizes in relation to each other. I’m a symmetrical girl for most things in life, but prefer a loose, non-symmetrical gallery wall. This is a helpful wall layout guide if you need some ideas for arrangements, but again, most are pretty symmetrical and I think it’s okay to be relaxed and casual with art placement (i.e. not lining up perfectly, not equal spaces between all frames, etc.).  One thing I do like to do is to arrange the art in a rough square or rectangle. This keeps everything relating, but not perfectly lined up.

For the gallery wall in Audrey’s room, I started with the largest piece first (the floral paper – so darling, yes?!) and used it to anchor the left side. Then I just started moving pieces around a little bit like a puzzle. I tried to alternate the sizes and orientation (so not two horizontal 8×10’s next to each other) as well as the frame color. Then I took it one step further and spread out work by the same artist and colors. For example, the mermaid print, cake table and shoe prints all have that pretty teal/minty blue and I kept them separate so that the color was spread out and it keeps your eye moving around to take it all in. The same is true for the gold accents – I placed them throughout the arrangement rather than next to each other.

Once you find an arrangement you like, now you get to mess up your walls and start poking holes in them! Yay! I know this can be scary, but my theory is that they are just walls and are very easy to patch and paint over if you decide to take down the art at some point. So don’t be afraid, let your walls be your canvas.

I pulled the artwork one at a time and followed the same layout I had on the ground.

An hour or so later, here is what I ended up with:

This wall now makes me so happy and Audrey loves it, too.

Each piece is meaningful and has been collected just for her. I just love how it turned out!

1. Mighty To Save by Fancy That Design House

2. No longer available. From Janet Hill Studios

3. Be you tiful. By me

4. Mini card by 1 Canoe 2 from She Reads Truth

5. Little Dresses by Julia Denos

6. Mermaid by Rifle Paper Co from Paper Source

7. Mini card by She Reads Truth

8. Cardboard covered letter

9. Twirl print by Lindsay Letters for Jones Design Company (we have just a few more on sale here)

10. Button flower bouquet (tutorial here)

11. Mint Floral Wrapping Paper by Rifle Paper Co for Paper Source

12. DIY Silhouette (tutorial here)

13. No longer available by Janet Hill Studios (but she has so many other great ones)

14. Flower Shop by Coco + Ollie

15. Paper Crown (tutorial here)

Apparently I had some things to say about how to create a gallery wall! Hopefully the info is helpful and if you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment below.