Hey friends, let’s put up a gallery wall! You know all those picture perfect houses you see on Pinterest and Instagram? You can easily customize the feel of your space using pictures you print or create and frame. Here’s how I put mine together.
Choose a Theme
The first step is choosing a central theme or inspiration. You can use a color, a quote, or style of image to build a collective idea. I used one of my favorite quotes from Holly Black’s The Folk of the Air series to inspire mine. The quote is “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold lest your heart’s blood run cold” and it’s from The Lost Sisters. These gorgeous words inspired me to curate a gallery wall with a wild fairy tale feel.
I spent a lot of time looking at various images, carefully selecting ones that were free to use from stock photos and public domain images. Feel free to add your own artwork into the mix or just use your artwork if you have enough. I decided to use images that were 8.5 x 11 (regular letter size paper) to reduce the stress of finding frames to fit.
Design Your Layout
I recruited a friend to help design a layout that emphasized my themes. We played around with several potential layouts before landing on an asymmetrical design. We chose it because it not only reduced the stress of making things perfect, but also added a carefree feeling to the final product.
Hang Your Art
Now for the tricky part – putting it up. To lessen stress and give myself additional time to play with spacing, I taped letter size paper up on the wall to see how it would work. I marked X’s on each sheet to know where the hooks I was using would need to be hammered in.
The fun part was putting the pictures up after I had the hooks in. I still managed to not give myself enough space for one of my pictures and had to remove the hook and choose a slightly different placement for that picture. Seeing the final version of my gallery wall was thrilling. I love looking at it every day!
What themes would you use to decorate your space?
Angie Reed
As the teen librarian, Angie organizes amazing events and online activities. She also reads a lot of YA and is eager to suggest a book you can't put down.