Gallery Wall

And so starts the reveal of my dining room/living room makeover.  Today’s reveal – the gallery wall:

This was for sure one of those projects that evolved and grew as it went.  Really!  This room is right off the front entrance of our home, so before it was blah, and now I actually enjoy the first impression that our home gives to people.

First off, I completely forgot to take a “before” picture – but I found this gem in my blog archives from May 2009 – and yep, the pictures were more recent, but the frames and the layout was the exact same – just goes to show Trevor that I don’t change things around and make holes in the wall near as much as he thinks.

So anyways, here’s how the story goes….

Cut It Out Frames are AWESOME.  They sent me these amazing frames to try out and show off to you:

The frames come unfinished and then you paint them to match your decor.  They are super reasonably priced and such a fun unique element to add to your home – I highly recommend checking them out.  And you can find them on facebook as well:  Cut It Out on facebook.  The frames come with a cardboard backing but not with glass – I just grabbed frames from the Dollar Store and used the glass from them.

So I get their frames in the spring – and I painted them right away.  And got ready to add them to the wall – but the frames were so awesome and my wall wasn’t awesome.  So I thought – I need to repaint!  Yep, the Cut It Out Frames started the whole makeover of my living/dining room.  Kind of embarrassing that it took me this long to review the frames, but it was worth it – they fit in so much better in an updated space.

I had to wait til Grandma Day Camp (when my mom puts on a day camp every day for a week, so I have a week of kid-free days) to tackle the room redo.  So that happened in the beginning of August.

I wasn’t planning on having a “Gallery Wall”, but it just turned out that way.  Because I kept adding frames to the original three I started with.  I incorporated the Cut It Out Frames, then a friend suggest that I needed some smaller frames to balance all the larger frames.  I grabbed these beauties from World Market:

And the positioned things on the ground until it looked right and called Trevor in to hang everything up.  I know lots of people suggest cutting out paper and hanging it on the walls to get a visual, but that seemed like a lot of work.

The empty frame on the left has the quote “Don’t Forget to Be Awesome” that I blogged about here: Framed Quote.  I will blog a tutorial on the burlap bee in the other empty frame in a few days.

 I revamped our family name sign and  have a tutorial for that (including an awesome tip on how to get crisp lines)

Let’s recamp – – it used to look like this:

And now when you look in the room it looks like this:

 I’d call that a major improvement.  I love my new gallery wall!