One project down, a zillion to go!

I’m so glad I got over my fear of tackling a gallery wall, because I’m completely in love with how it turned out. Take a look!

Clearly I’m a fan of color and pattern, and it’s taken a long time to figure out how to inject all of the that goodness into this room in particular. I’d been talking up the idea of a gallery wall to Jason for quite some time now, and I think I finally just wore him down. :) Anyhoo, once he jumped on the bandwagon I knew it was now or never.

So first I laid out the art pieces I was considering (you might remember that step from this post):

Then I got to work cutting out pieces of Christmas wrapping paper and magazines in the same size and shape as the frames.

My plan was to stick them to the wall and rearrange them until I liked how everything looked.

Then I just started hanging those suckers up!! Here’s how it looked about halfway through the process.

I had a little helper, which is always nice. :)

And here’s how it turned out!!

It’s a far cry from where this room started.  Want to take a little walk down memory lane?  If you’ve been around since the beginning of this blog, then you remember how our den used to look:

( Check out more pictures of how our house used to look here. )

Thank goodness we were able to ditch that look – yikes!  After we got the bones of the room whipped into shape the room looked empty and a little boring (and kind of like a sofa show room) for a long time:

The next step was to add some fun accents with handmade pillows and a new rug, and then just a few weeks ago we switched things up with our passed-down-through-the-family secretary:

And now, finally, our den feels like us! There are still things I want to change and projects I want to undertake, but I’m really happy with it.  (And yes, that’s the Real Housewives of New Jersey on the tv – it’s only like the 3rd time I’ve seen it but I kind of see now why some people are obsessed with that show, it’s addictive!)

Ooh, and of course I have to fill you in on the details for all the artwork!

(1), (6), (9), (10), and (12) are all little paintings or drawings that I’ve done over time.  (1) is a series three watercolors that I painted in 6th grade – my family always went to Estes Park in Colorado during the summer and I would spend at least half the trip in the craft center.  It was heaven at the time.  :)  I painted (6) yesterday when I had an empty spot in the gallery wall, and I really like how it turned out!  (9) is a pastel and ink that I did of tulips in 9th grade in art class – for some reason it’s stuck around over the years.  As for (10), I’ve been wanting an “H” somewhere in our house to represent our last name, and I thought the gallery wall was the perfect place for it.  I painted it using a version of this tutorial for a metal look and it turned out pretty well!  And last but not least, (12) is a doodle of an elephant (her name is Ellie Phunt) that I drew on the paper tablecloth while I was bored during a review class for the bar exam after law school.  I just like it.  :)

(2) is a Kandinsky print that I bought from Z Gallerie when I started law school – it was $75 and I felt very grown up at the time for purchasing a piece of art.

(3) is a wood block print that my grandmother did (she was a ridiculously great artist) over half a century ago.  My mom made new copies for all of us kiddos a few years back.  :)

(4) is (I think) a Blue Morpho butterfly.  Also from my grandmother.

(5), (7) and (8) are pieces I picked up in Paris about 5 years ago with my aunt and sister.  The two oil paintings (5 and 7) are copies of master paintings (both Monet, I believe) that I bought from a street vendor along the Seine near Notre Dame (I feel oh so snobby writing that!) and had custom framed at Joann’s.  (8) in the large black frame is a pastel of the Moulin Rouge that I bought at . . . the Moulin Rouge.  It has that old school 20s vibe and amazing color and lots of fun images like can can dancers and the iconic windmill from the Moulin Rouge.  I couldn’t get a picture without blur because of the glass, but here’s a close up:

(11) is one of my favorite pictures from our wedding – a big smooch as we’re leaving the church and about to hop into the limo.

(13) used to be painted a pale pink and hung in my bedroom when I was little.  It’s a really ornate piece of plaster molding, and I painted the trim the same color as this artwork on the other side of the room.

And of course I can’t resist a few more gratuitous shots, so here you go. :)

All in all, this was a super gratifying project.  I can’t wait to hear what you guys think!

Click here to find out how I hung my artwork on the wood paneling without using any nails.