A blank waste turned into a designer space (haha- kind of)

Have you ever been watching TV and been annoyed at the wall behind it? I realize- that's a really strange comment, but it is actually really hard to hang something behind a flat screen TV. Nothing ever looks right. This particular one is not mounted on the wall (like the other two TVs in our household) but it still creates this odd shaped space behind itself that looks equally awkward with or without a single piece of art above it.

This is where the gallery wall comes in- oohh, ahhh:

photo from http://www.emilyaclark.blogspot.com/ (I'm also really liking that rug!)

both from http://www.younghouselove.com/

Anyways- I saw a TON of gallery walls on different blogs that I read often- can't even remember where all-and then I saw this one:

http://www.emilyaclark.blogspot.com/

 and it gave me a little hope that maybe I TOO could put one together behind my TV with this picture as my guide. Before I entered blogland I wouldn't have ever even attempted this feat.

YES! Super excited at this point- but also a little scary and intimidating for an A type like me- I always want things to line up perfectly, so finding a layout that is both random but meaningful looking was a big challenge.

Off the bat I decided that I wanted to keep both the frames and the artwork pretty much black and white. I felt like this would make everything a little more of a group than a bunch of random things. Then, I started trying to come up with different things to put in all my frames. I knew I didn't have a beachy theme or anything like that so I didn't want to flat out copy the inspiration picture, but try to find things that make it our own.

So I pulled a couple things from around the house including the picture of the beach chairs here at the top, my wedding portrait in the middle and an old picture of P making cookies at his grandmother's house when he is about 5 (AWWW so cute right?)

It was supposed to be in black and white too but I forgot to tell the man at Walgreen's I wanted it B/W so for right now it's in color, as is the childhood picture of me. I am going to leave it like this and see if it bothers me. You can see that this isn't on the wall at this point either, I started laying everything out on the guest bed- this helped me figure out how things would look on the wall.

Then I added more:

This is a picture from our 1 year anniversary trip to San Fran and our wedding invitation that I took to Kinko's and made a copy at 250% just for a more graphic feel.

Here was my final layout before I started hanging it on the wall-this was after several changes over about a week. I would wander into the room and just stare at it and play around with the layout until it was just right! 

 You can see my childhood picture up top- the color may not bother me, but it is a little dark- I might have to have it lightened up. I was also still missing my Dwell Studio Gate fabric in Brindle for the long black frame

http://www.fabric.com/

and my precious vintage dictionary page art with the Eiffel Tower painted on that I purchased from Winterberry Cottage on Etsy

 (I LOVE Paris and all things French so it was perfectly fitting). The second they came in the mail I was nailing stuff into the wall. Probably not the best idea- i would measure more first looking back, and THEN nail. But needless to say I got everything up last Friday. And I like it:

BUT... that being said- I think it's going to be changing a little. First off, you can see the poor little M didn't make the cut- he's still sitting in the chair. Also I realize the tallest black frame (with my childhood picture) is too high up, and the one just to the left is really a little low! I am going to be fixing that, and hope to add Mr. M back into the mix, probably on the right side somewhere.

Also- did you notice my other switcheroo?!?

I exchanged the wedding portrait and the Golden Gate photo- I didn't think the small square frame was good enough for my wedding portrait! HA. No not so much that but it's square and the portrait really is not and I loved seeing the arch of the church doors behind me in the portrait so I switched them and I much prefer it!

I'm sure you'll be seeing even more changes in the weeks to come but for now this is a vast improvement over the large blank wall!