Gallery Wall of Adventures

Shortly after we moved in here Dan and I started chatting about how we had so much wall space that was begging for photos of the many adventures and travels we've shared together. Originally we came up with the idea of a mosaic photo blown up extra large on canvas which would showcase so many pictures from our trips. But, it didnt take long to realize that we were hmmm-ing and haaaa-ing over it too much. Not too long after that we were inspired by John & Sherry's gallery hallway and realized that was exactly what we wanted to do with this large open wall in our dinning/kitchen area.

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Here's a shot of the kitchen right before we moved in from when were scoping out the place...

And this is about a week after we moved in. In our last apartment this dresser lived in our kitchen (which totally felt appropriate) and acted as a buffet; however, here it seemed a little small and out of place.

So after I had spent some time collecting cheapo frames from the Salvation Army and sanding and repainting them all to be white I cut out shapes the size of each frame (just traced them on the paper) and taped them on the wall. I can't say why I started out in the left corner...perhaps at the time I still thought I had enough frames to cover a large part of the wall...then I realized I would need about 6x as many to cover even the top half of this wall. Oh, and we picked white frames because I did enjoy the way the white gave some unity to the variety of pictures/art/maps/etc on John and Sherry's wall. I love metals, different shapes, thicknesses and the like on frames but I knew I, too, was going to hanging up an eclectic array of travel related memorabilia.

OK, so I dont seem to have an "in between" shot of when I actually rearranged the templates into this format but nonetheless, here it is with art. I think my "plan of attack" was to start with a heavy looking frame/art in the middle to anchor it and then work out. I knew this looked top heavy but I didnt care because at the same time I wasn't contented with having so few frames so I figured I'd end up adding to the wall relatively soon....and so I did. :) Oh, and initially I didnt know what art I was going to hang so I clipped a bunch of colorful shots out of magazines. Dan was so disappointed that I got rid of the clipping of 3 long tailed monkeys goofing around with each other. :)

I ended up finding a whole bunch of white frames at Hobby Lobby for 40% (or more) off the already cheap sticker price and snagged a bunch for just $36.00. I will say I enjoyed them much more than my slightly cheaper bunch ($20.00) of frames from the Salvation Army because the backings were easy to remove and replace so changing my art would be easier over LOTS of years. The ones from the SA were usually finished with staples and those are hard to bend and flex multiple times if you want to change out the art. Just a tip. So here she is after I did more templating and hung up the remainders. Speaking of which, I guess I should explain the template thing. John and Sherry shared this great secret to accurate nail holes for each frame and I just repeated it. Basically, I cut the paper the size of the frame, turn the frame face-down and put paper lying on top. Then I'd take a pencil and punch a whole in the paper where the groove/teeth were that would hang on the nail in the wall. That way after I taped my template to the wall I had a perfectly centered hole to punch a nail through that would allow my frame to hang beautifully.

Some of my favorite pieces up there were these random art projects I put together. The big dipper has special meaning to Dan and I so I found this cute canvas rendition on Pinterest and had a grand ol' time painting and punching pins through the canvas to create something unique and special for us.

This is also a SUPER COOL piece for us! We found these Megaladon/GreatWhite Shark teeth on the beach (not more than 25 feet apart!) on our trip in North Carolina so I thought it would be a fun reminder of that vacation. The frame itself was a shadowbox from IKEA and I used canvas paper behind the teeth to glue them down to and to make it look like they were in sand. It looks so cool with the tan canvas. Very fun way to remember looking down by our feet on that sandy beach and saying, "OMG, look at this shark tooth!" :) And Yes, they are as huge as they look! The one on the left is about 2 inches long, at least!