On The Gallery Wall Bandwagon

I've been admiring these pictures on Pinterest for a while now.

Source: coastalliving.com via pour on Pinterest

Source: thehousehome.tumblr.com via pour on Pinterest

Source: shabbynest.blogspot.com via pour on Pinterest

Source: thehousehome.tumblr.com via pour on Pinterest

Gallery walls seem to be all the rage right now, and whilst I would normally at least make an attempt not to blatantly follow a trend, I really wanted to!

So I decided to just give in, hop on that bandwagon and make my own in the lounge room!!!

Most of the pictures inside the frames are pictures from our Europe trip. I just printed them on plain paper, and intend to change them out over time as new art takes my fancy.

The black fan we got from a dollar store (if you can even call them that) in Barcelona. The owl necklace above it I bought on Ebay for $1.99 a few months ago. The clock we bought online while we were still living at our last house. It used to live above the bath in our ensuite.

I made the mask up the top about ten years ago for a friend's fancy dress masquerade-themed birthday party. Next to that is a shot of some graffiti in Rome, saying "Buongiorno Principessa"

This is the only wedding photo we've had printed onto canvas. It's in pride of place. The little photo next to it is a postcard from Paris, showing the roads branching out from the Arc de Triomphe. I love that view. Above that, a photo I took of a random canal-side doorway in Venice, and beside that, a photo of us in a gondola in Venice.

This shadow picture is one of my favourites. We took it while standing on the town wall surrounding Dubrovnik in Croatia. The ferris wheel picture above it is the Prater in Vienna.

But there are two opposing walls in the lounge, one behind each couch. So why stop at one wall? Then the room would just be unbalanced! So the other wall got the same treatment.

This mirror is one of my favourite things on the wall. I didn't realise when I bought it on Ebay (around the same time as I bought the bathroom mirror) that the glass in it was a convex shape. I was actually quite disappointed when I realised it wasn't an ordinary flat mirror and experienced some serious buyers remorse. But... with a fresh coat of shiny black spraypaint and a prominent spot in my little gallery, it's got a new lease on life, and I love it!

You can see the entire room in it, including the opposite wall!

Next to it is a necklace, which interestingly enough also came from Croatia. Above that is a postcard of the ceiling in the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. Sorry about the blurry shot.

This is one of my favourite shots from our holiday (one of them). A canal in Venice by night.

The pebble heart photo at the top was actually something I noticed in the original main street in the Roman Forum, and just happened to snap a photo of. Beneath it is a little plastic butterfly clip from France, and beneath that a quote from Pride and Prejudice. It doesn't quite seem the right place for that quote, so I will probably switch it for something else.

On the other side, the rose ball I actually found in a shoe shop last year for $10. It was apparently left over from a previous window display, and they were trying to get rid of it! Next to it is a framed postcard from Mont St Michel, France. Beside that, a little wooden statue of a father holding his baby from Tom's parents.

Above that, a little leather rose purse from Florence, another shadow picture of Tom and I in our dorky hats in Santorini,  a little owl made of Belgian lace (from Belgium) in the little oval frame, and the very faint picture on the bottom left is actually a biro-drawn picture of the landscaping plan for our yard at our last house that we made one day while making plans on the run.

Decorating those two walls has made an enormous difference to the room! Even though you wouldn't expect it from black frames, they've warmed up the space so much. We've got very high ceilings, and having painted the walls a light colour, it can feel a little cold. Adding a bit of colour to the walls has made the room feel cosier, but made the most of the height at the same time.

Plus, we get to look at our beautiful memories of our holiday, and can change out the contents of the frames really easily when the mood strikes.

Don't let me fool you though, this definitely didn't happen quickly. Making these frame walls has been quite the extended operation! It's taken weeks to get them finished. And they're still not technically finished, since not only do I want to change some of the photos, but there are still a few spaces around the edges that I haven't yet got frames to fill. I think I'll write a separate post on the steps of the process thus far.

What do you think of them? Love them? Hate them? Indifferent them?