My Gallery Wall

This gallery wall is the first big project that I finished in my new apartment! I’ve been working on it for a long time. It took me a while to find frames to fit my pictures because I sourced most of them from charity shops. I’m really happy with it though, I think it makes the living room look much more homely and put-together. It’s quite a weird room – I have my sofa, dining room table and office desk in there and I’ve been struggling to make the room cohesive but I think the gallery wall really helps. I thought I’d share a few tips with you that I learnt along the way!

1. If you’re sourcing second hand frames, it’s good to have a colour scheme in mind so that your frames look nice together! I only picked up frames that were gold or brown, but you could choose black frames or colourful plastic ones.

2. Trace each frame onto a piece of newspaper and blue tack the arrangement onto the wall before you knock any nails in. This way you can play around with the layout before you’ve fixed anything to the wall.

3. Arrangements with the big frames in the middle and the smaller ones on the outside always look nice! That’s just my opinion, but if you’re stuck for layout ideas, it’s a good place to start!

4. You can have old battered frames fixed up by a framing shop for less than it would cost to buy a custom frame from them. For some of the frames I found in charity shops, I had the glass put in by a framers shop!

I’ve also recently hung these pieces of art in my flat! The elephant is a beautiful handwoven tapestry that was given to me by my Mum and Dad and the large poster is a Klimt print that my boyfriend gave me in an Ikea frame. The Egyptian painting is an artwork done on a scroll that we picked up on a family holiday to Egypt eight years ago!

A lot of the art and the furniture in my flat are things that my family had already, so it’s nice to find a use for them! There are a lot of sentimental pieces on my wall. The bunny pictures are of my rabbit Archie and the two rabbits we had before him – Louis and Henry. The Rousseau tiger print is particularly special to me. When I was young and my parents took me to one of the art museums in London, I fell in love with that painting and it was really the beginning of my love for art and paintings and galleries. The print on the wall was given to my Dad by my Grandma long before I was born. My Grandma passed away when I was 14 and I’m sad that I never had the chance to get know her as an adult. It’s nice that my Dad and I liked the same piece of art as a children and having something she bought on the wall makes me feel connected to her still.

Art credits (clockwise from centre) – Rousseau, Tiger in a Tropical Storm / A photo of Henry / A map (from South Africa?) found in my parents attic / A photo of Archie / Damien Hirst, Doorways to the Kingdom of Heaven (picked up whilst visiting the Tate with my Mum!) / Stacie Swift, Rabbits (the lovely lady who designed my blog header!) / A photo of Louis / A print bought by my parents in Zimbabwe / Kate Gabrielle, A Flapper Doodle Halloween