Pictures, Pictures on the Wall

One project I had been wanting to tackle for a while is the art in our living room. Originally, we had a flower picture you can see in this post here. It was really too small to fill the space. For a Mother's Day and Father's Day gift, my parents gave us our framed family bluebonnet picture. I decided it would be the perfect centerpiece for a gallery wall.

 

I spent some time on Pinterest coming up with ideas of how to arrange a gallery wall that doesn't look too random. I decided using all black frames would help tie things together enough that I could use color pictures. I love the look of black and white photos in all white frames on a colored wall, but wanted to work with what I have. 

To plan my layout, I gathered the frames I wanted to use and then roughly traced them on tissue paper. Then I took my tissue paper patterns and taped them on the wall with masking tape. Painter's tape would probably work even better, but the masking tape didn't damage the walls since it was so temporary. I moved things around until I came up with this arrangement. I love it because it is balanced but not too symmetrical.

Since my patterns weren't exact, I used a piece of printer paper to make precise guides for determining where to put the nails in the wall. I put the paper on the back of each frame and lined it up with a top corner. Then I marked a hole where the hanger on the back was. This part was super easy, no measuring required!

Then I lined the corner of my paper up with the corner of the tissue paper pattern and taped it to the wall in its place. I used a ruler to double check the space between frames to keep that consistent on both sides. After that all I had to do was add a nail where I had marked the hole.

 

I repeated those steps until all the pictures I had were hung! I still need to find the white mattes I have somewhere to replace the maroon ones. I also need to buy three more 5" x 7" frames since I only have one. I am waiting to hang the one I do have in case I can't find the same one and need to buy all four to have them match.

I am really happy with the progress I made on our gallery wall! There are no more pictures leaning on the book shelf and the awkward empty space above the couch is now filled with memories.

Have you ever hung a gallery wall? Do you have any advice for making it a quick and easy process?

Update and ideas

Since we decided to renew our lease one more year and our little one is becoming more mobile, our organizing/blogging pace has definitely slowed. We did tackle our master bathroom (post coming soon-ish) and make a little progress in the kitchen and guest bedroom during June.

Since our decision to renew our lease means we will have a 2-year old while still in this apartment (how is he almost one?!), we now have plans to do a major switch around to give our little dude his own room!

In the mean time, here are some of my favorite organization ideas I have come across recently.

 1) A DIY shower caddy using a second shower curtain rod. I love that you can customize with how ever many baskets you need. You could also use a second rod like this for hanging pool towels or clothes to drip dry over the tub.

If you know where this photo came from, please share! I found it on Pinterest with a dead link. :(

2) A Thousand Words blog,  has a great system for organizing photos.

3) 2 Little Hooligans has this clever idea for corralling gift wrapping supplies using a stool.

Do you have any great organization ideas you have discovered recently?