Gallery Wall

Hello again! I hope you stopped by Henning Love for my quick tour of Cleveland.

Over the weekend, John and I worked a little more on the front room. My parents visited a few weekends ago and brought my Grandma's hope chest for the room. My Dad refinished the chest and it looks beautiful! More on that later.

Now that we have a little more substance to the room, it was time to work on the walls. We have all sorts of artwork and pictures, so a gallery wall was the way to go.

The first step was collecting everything we might consider putting on the wall. First, to see what we have. Second, to see if we needed anything else.

We decided we had enough art to make a cohesive, yet slightly eclectic, gallery wall. So we started to arrange the frames on the floor. Making sure to balance color, sizes, subject matter, and horizontal/vertical orientation.

Once we were happy with the design, we cut out paper templates and started to hang them on the wall. Use painters tape to hang the paper so you reposition things without pulling the paint off the wall. This was a very important step because our design on the floor wasn't to scale with the wall. The arrangement on the floor was more vertical than the final arrangement on the wall.

After that, John started hanging our art! He nailed the picture hanger directly into the paper and then pulled it away from the wall. That way, he knew everything would be properly spaced. He started in the middle with the "D" and slowly worked his way outwards.

Here's the final gallery wall! I love that it's a mixture of formal frames gold frames with modern black ones. The common themes are family, travel, and faith.

Starting from the top row going left to right:

• The Eiffel Tower (purchased in Paris with my Mom, sister, and aunt), John's grandparents, a print of Hong Kong, and a photograph taken by John's Dad out west
• Pictures from our trip to NYC during senior year at SLU, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the "D" made from old ceiling tiles (bought with Jess at an antique market), a wedding picture with our parents, and a house blessing given to us by John's parent
• A decal from Piper (see below), photo strips from John's sister's wedding, a cross given to us as a wedding present, and a wall hanging of fish bought in Chinatown during a trip to San Francisco with my family

Piper of One Sydney Road sent this wall decal as a surprise in the mail and I think it adds the perfect touch to our gallery wall.

PS - This entire project cost $0 since we had everything on hand! Though if you look back in time, it would cost a couple hundred dollars with all the framing and purchasing the art.

As for the hope chest, my Dad did an amazing job! Here's what it looked like when they picked it up from my Grandma's house:

And here's how it looks now:

A hope chest is where a woman would collect things, like linens, for her new home after she got married. I think my Mom said that were greeting cards with my Grandma's maiden name and newspaper clippings from the 1930's in the chest. So this hope chest definitely has some history!

Since there's a cedar lining, we may store blankets and linens inside. And we may change what's on the top based on the season or holiday. Currently, there's an engagement picture, a picture from John's family's trip to Italy, a vase from Ikea, and "Design*Sponge at Home."

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