Living Room Redo - Making A Gallery Wall

One of my to do's in the living room was to hang my art work in a more dramatic way.  I have seen so many gallery walls that I like so I decided to go for it.  Here is the finished product and the how to!

 

Here are few inspiration photos from my research...

From Bryn Alexandra:

Bryn is in my book club and an awesome interior designer in Charlotte.  You should check out this post.  She redecorated her parents bedroom.  It was pretty dated without much style but now it is amazing as you can see from the photo.

(Southern Accents)

The reason why I like these is that they aren't uniform with matching frames, sizes, etc.  I like gallery walls like that but putting one together requires $$$ to buy the frames or paint the frames and I wanted a free project.

If you make a gallery wall you must use brown paper cut outs of your paintings. I tried to do a wall before and gave up in frustration with a lot of nail holes in the wall. This time I decided to do it the right way and it paid off.

So I started by assembling all of my various paintings.  I figured most of what I had was going to go with each other on a wall.  I knew I wasn't going to use all of them but I wanted lots to work with.  Then I traced them each on brown paper so I could play around with the layout on the wall without having to actually have them.

Then I taped the "paintings" on the wall so I could play around with the layout.  I probably rearranged this 10 times until I finally achieved a balanced yet asymmetrical arrangement.

Next I laid the paintings that made the final cut on the floor as they would hang on the wall to make sure that I liked how they looked together.  Whew!  I liked them!

Then I hung them which was very easy because I could use the paper to guide where I put the nails.

Many gallery walls that you see have sentimental value.  Even though these see like a random assortment of paintings, they do have special meaning to me and Rudy.

The first two were done by Jean Cauthen.  She taught me how to paint in the plein air style and I was lucky enough to travel to Italy with her.  We are planning a plein air workshop here in Charlotte in the spring. 

New York is one of our favorite places to visit so Rudy picked this out to represent our fun trips there.  Jean even painted our names into this one which makes them even more special to us.

I painted this one in upstate NY visiting Rudy's cousin and his wife.  I loved how peaceful the countryside was when I painted this.

I painted this one to our trip to California and Joshua Tree.  (not such a good picture, sorry!)

I think of Rudy with this one because he loves stream fishing.  I painted this a few years ago from a picture...I haven't quite mastered the art of painting moving water.  Sounds weird but it is hard!

Here is the wall with the furniture in the shot...not the best photo! 

I love my gallery wall!  I can't wait to show off the entire living room when all my changes are complete!