$21 Kitchen Gallery Wall

 

Wow!  It's been a VERY long time since I've blogged.  It's sort of strange to try to write again after all this time of no writing.  But I'm going to give it my best shot.  I won't bore you with all the reasons that I haven't been blogging.  Or some of the reasons that I'm trying to get back into blogging again.  I'm just going to jump in and act like nothing has changed!

 

I've had a few people ask me if I was going to blog about home/DIY stuff again now that we are settling into our new home.  My response has been that I would need to actually FINISH some sort of project before I could blog about it.  I tend to get bored working on one thing for very long, so I am notorious for having 10 different things going on at one time.  I have tons of ideas swimming around in my head all the time.  But it takes time to find all the parts and pieces needed to complete one of the ideas that I have.  Today, I finally had everything I needed to complete a little gallery wall that I have been thinking about for a couple of months.

 

Gallery walls are all over the Internet now.  We have all seen them and pinned a few of our favorites on Pinterest.  This is my first attempt at creating one in my home, and I thought I would share with you how I went about putting it together just in case you are stuck trying to figure out your gallery wall.  Maybe you will find a helpful hint in here somewhere that will make it a little easier for you.  If however, you don't care about gallery walls at all, check back later this week for some photography related posts.  This is a photography blog after all! 

 

So about the gallery wall, I started by gathering all the items that I wanted to include in my gallery.  Then I taped some pieces of paper together and traced all of the items onto the papers.  After tracing, I cut everything out and taped them to the wall to figure out my arrangement.  This prevents having a million little nail holes in your wall when you are finished.  I just taped them to the wall and fiddled with the spacing and location until I was happy with the layout. 

 

 While I was tracing my frames, I also marked on the paper templates exactly where my nail would need to be to hang that frame.  Again, this prevents ending up with a bunch of extra nail holes.

 

Once I had my arrangement the way I wanted it, I hammered my nails right though the paper.

And then you simply pull the paper off the wall.  So simple. 



 

This gallery wall is in my kitchen, and I had a couple of cutting boards that I wanted to include in the layout.  Originally I thought that maybe I could use plate hangers to hang the cutting boards with.  But after looking at some plate hangers in the store, I realized that wasn't going to work.  So I bought some Command picture hanging strips.

I applied the hanging strips per the instructions on the packaging.  I had to start by cleaning both cutting boards with rubbing alcohol.  Then I pressed two strips firmly onto the back of the cutting board and two strips onto the wall.  The instructions said to let the strips adhere for an hour before hanging the picture, or in my case a cutting board.  I reluctantly decided to follow the directions and let everything set for an entire hour.  I killed the time by chauffeuring kids to friends houses and basketball open gym.  Story of my life!  Anyway, after the hour, I simply pressed the strips on the board to the strips on the wall, and just like that I had created a little fun art our of cutting boards.



 

And here is the final result!

I'm excited to finally have this stuff on the wall. 

Hopefully it will motivate me to get some more things hung up around here.



Dennis and I both like map art right now.  I found this fun cutting board on clearance at Target for $12.


 

This is just a fun little Cheeseburger In Paradise printable that I created.  Our entire family loves Jimmy Buffett and the kids regularly request this song when we are in the car.

I've included the printable at the bottom of this post if you would like a copy for yourself.  Just right click and save.
 

This is a clipping from a magazine framed on top of a piece of purple paper. 

 I just thought it was cute and saved it to frame it.  You really can make art out of some many things. 



 

And this fat little pig is my husbands.  He made this thing in middle or high school.  I don't remember which.  He loves this goofy thing, so I thought I would display it.  I have to admit, he is kind of cute!


This little picture display was kind of an afterthought.  I had some Instagram pictures printed last week for another project and ended up with more then I could use in that project.  So I just grabbed some twine, hung it on the wainscoting, and then clothes pinned the extra pictures to it.



 And there you have it.  A fun little inexpensive gallery wall.



I spent $4 on the frames on clearance, $4 on the Command strips, $12 on the map cutting board, and probably $1 on the pictures.  Everything else I had on hand or printed out on my own.



And here is the printable for you if you want it.