Gallery Wall - It's done!

It's finally finished!

And it turned out better then I thought it would.

My gallery wall.

I talk about how I hung the pictures HERE.

I love that they stay put, there are no holes in my wall, and it will be difficult for the

boys to knock them off the wall as they race down the stairs. 

That is all very important.

Interspersed throughout the pictures are some acid washed mirrors.

Just to kind of break things up.

My friend Tamarynn helped me learn how to do this.

Here is a link with instructions if you are interested in doing this too.

A few of the frames already came with mirrors,

but I called a glass shop and had them cut me a few more to the size of my frames.

Here you can see two of the mirrors.

(You can also see a reflection of our dining table with the breakfast dishes still sitting there.

Hey, I have never claimed perfection.)

And this is where I have to claim genius.

I was having a hard time trying to decide what photos to put in all these frames.

So I opened up a picture of the gallery wall in my word processing software

and I dragged my photos over to it and I was able to play with them, resize and arrange them

 so I knew exactly what photo I wanted to go in which spot.

And also where I wanted my mirrors.

So I knew exactly which size to order for my prints.

About Ordering Prints

This is important, you can learn from my mistakes.

Some of my photos were bright and some of them were pale.

I wanted them to kind of all have the same tone,

so I edited them adding 50% of a sepia tone to them.

I used PicMonkey to edit my photos.

Then I just saved them to a folder on my desktop.

I ordered my photos online from Walmart.

I ordered the 11x14 poster size photos separately because they had to be shipped to me.

And I ordered the rest from the 1 hour in-store photo department.

I was not happy with these.

They turned out too dark and some of them were cropped wrong.

I took them home, and grumbled about it for a little bit wondering if I

should just live with them or if I should order them anew.

Meanwhile the larger ones that I ordered separately came in.

I unrolled them and.... *angels singing*

They were perfect!

The finish and the color and tone were just what I wanted.

I decided to order the rest for delivery too.

I cropped them perfectly to size before I ordered them

because I didn't want them to be cropped wrong.

And I ordered a matte finish on the photos.

When I got them they were perfect too.

NOTE* if you have them shipped to your local Walmart site-to-store the shipping is free.

This is how I had them shipped and I was called when they arrived.

So that is how I did it.

It took awhile, partly because I procrastinate, partly because of bad weather,

partly because of mistakes and partly because it really was a lot of work.

"But Rachael," You implore,

"The picture you took of the wall is lovely, but we can't really see the photos

that are in the frames very clearly."

Well, since I have no problem showing off pics of the fam here you go!

Please no copying my photos :-)

I could look at these all day! (And I do!)

My boys really are darling.

They are especially darling in these photos where they are not making messes

or being obnoxious like they are in every day life.

Don't get me wrong, they are still cute in day-to-day life.

In fact the cuteness factor has saved them from "The Wrath of Mom" quite often.

I love them so.

Thanks!