TV Gallery Wall. 99% Complete.

Even though my blog has been admittedly slow, my instagram feed never is.  It’s definitely my favorite form of social media.  It allows me to stay in contact with everyone and even acts as a mini-blog, documenting the things I’m working on and loving on.

If you follow along with me, you probably saw that I started making over our bedroom {for the millionth time} almost a year ago.  The reason for it?  Well there’s two reasons actually…

1) I l-o-v-e to rearrange and redecorate.  It’s a problem, but I’m confident I’m not the only blogger who suffers from this affliction. ;)  I remember, as a kid, I was constantly rearranging my bedroom furniture all. the. time.  I love to switch things up and gain new perspective on a space. 

And most importantly, 2) our bedroom has never felt “right” to me.  I’ve switched things up quite a few times, and afterwards I always feel a little better, but I’m never 100% about the space.  Having an unsettled master bedroom is not ideal.  It’s the space you are supposed to retreat to...a place to quiet your mind and relax.  Our bedroom does nothing of the sort for me because when I’m in there, I’m constantly brainstorming about a space that will finally feel finished.

I took a few leaps in the right direction quite some time ago when I swapped out our furniture, installed my DIY lucite curtain rods and went darker on the walls.

When I completed that painting project, hubby removed our mounted TV {which I hated due to it’s placement}, and I decided the TV would live on our long dresser.  Once that decision was made, I immediately knew I wanted to put together a mini-gallery wall to tone down the “hey, look at the big TV” vibe we had going.

I didn’t want to spend much on the gallery wall, and luckily I didn’t have to.  I was able to shop our home and garbage pick from our neighbors {yup, I was that girl picking through a junk pile at the curb} for everything I put up on the wall.

Once I collected a bunch of things, I traced their forms onto rosin paper left over from refinishing our floors. {Pardon the grainy instgram pictures....they are all I could find from when I started this project. #bloggerfail}

After that, I taped the shapes onto the wall and played around with the arrangement.  

Once I liked what I saw, I busted out my handy, dandy 3M command strips {I do not hang a thing without them} to secure everything onto the wall.

And thennn, in true-to-me form, I let about three months pass while we stared at empty and/or ugly frames each day.  Finally I had enough and prettied things up.  I painted the garbage picked frames and even some of the mats.  

I used some of my Spoonflower wallpaper samples to add a little pop to a few pieces.

I gave two frames extra special treatment by adding the Besos print from The Smitten Collection and the Zebra Love print from Parima Studio.  You should check both ladies out because their stuff is uh-mazinggg...as in, I want it all!!

And done!!

Okay, well, 99% done.  I have a bit more twerking, errrr I mean tweaking, to do. My DIY radiant orchid art is replacing the empty gold frame, and that shiny thing will be replacing the empty black frame.  I'm also planning to fill the oval mat up with something better than my two-second-hack-job of a "Z".

Slowly but surely, I'm piecing this room together.  I don't care how long it takes, I won't stop until the room truly feels like us. :)

While the Mud Dried...

This weekend was all about mending fences cracks in our fireplace wall.  Unfortunately, it was an-ever-so-slow process {the joint compound I used said to wait 24 hours between coats...bleh}, so I was forced to take on another project to occupy my time.

Lucky for me, when I was cleaning out our 2^nd guest bedroom...aka the place where I store all my craft/project crap...I created two big piles of frames.  What the heck could a blogger do with a superfluous amount of frames?!?!  Create the very first gallery wall, EVER, in Internet history!!! ;)

For those of you who are over gallery walls...my apologies.  Please just avert your eyes, and wait for my next post about crack{s}.

I previously hung a mini-me gallery wall in our dining room, but I quickly swapped that out for some DIY picture ledges.  Since I didn’t want another cluster of frames in our very open living/dining room, I figured our hallway would be a great place to experiment, a la YHL.

We already have a few frames up in there.  They helped to fill the blank wall space, and they also sorta-kinda-maybe helped to camouflage our ugly thermostat.  I liked the look, but it didn’t knock my socks off.  I’ll be the first to admit...rarely do I get things “right” on the first try, if ever.  And even if I happen to nail it, I’m usually switching things up down the road.  It’s just how I am.  I like to tweak and make things fresh.  {Although I know a few of you are rolling your eyes, thinking...ummmm, gallery walls aren’t “fresh”.  I know, I know...but they are for my little hallway, so just pretend that this is a wonderful, albeit, not-brand-new idea.}

Technically, I have four walls to fill in our hallway.  {The spaces are broken up by alcoves to linen closets, a bathroom and a bedroom.}  I wanted to begin with the wall we’d see the most...the one visible from the kitchen.

I started by removing the two frames that were previously up, and I had all the other frames/things to hang in piles around me.  I just put things together like a puzzle until I liked what I saw.  Helpful tip {for me at least}: take a  picture of everthing once you settle on a layout.  It will help greatly when you are standing there wondering if you had that frame horizontally or vertically, etc. You'll be suprised at how quickly you forget...or maybe that's just me.

Then I took out some left over rosin paper from when we covered up our newly re-finished hardwoods.  I took each frame from the group, traced it and cut it out so I had a paper representation of it.

Once all the pieces were cut out, I taped them up on my wall.  I wanted to get the height, spacing and layout on the actual wall itself without any commitment.

I called the hubby over to see if he approved {because you know I wouldn’t have gone a step further if he didn’t like it ;) hehe}, and I got a big thumbs up.

That’s when I busted out my trusty 3M picture hanging strips and got down to business.  These things are amazingggg.  They are literally holding up everything in our house that they can.  Depending on the size and weight of your frame, you just stick the size and number of strips you need on the back of your frame...then when you are ready to hang them, peel the other side off...stick to the wall.  Press for 30 seconds, and voila!  You have a picture hung without any holes in the wall.

Of course, after you stick the frame to the wall for 30 seconds, you should remove the picture frame for 1 hour...and then put it back.  I may {or may not} have followed that rule, but they do tell you to do it that way in the instructions. ;)

One by one, I removed one “paper” frame and replaced it with a real one.  I used my level app on my iPhone to make sure things were pretty level, but I also used my stencil on the wall to see if things appeared straight.  {Old houses never have level walls.  I’d rather the frames seem level with my stencil pattern and wall, than level with...well, the Earth.}

Here's an picture from my last hanging experience to demonstrate my leveling abilities.

In no time, I went from this...

...to this!

That leaves me with three more walls to go.  Oh, and I also need to put some actual pictures, fabric, quotes, pretty paper, etc. in the frames.  Who wants to bet that I’ll be done with this project before the fall?!?!

PS-This post was not sponsored by 3M...I just religiously use their products to hang anything in my house that I can.  I've had nothing but success with them, so I wanted to pass along the tip to my awesome readers!

Wild Weekend.

How is Christmas only a week away?!?!?  I feel like December flew by in a flash.  And because time is just slipping away, I knew I had to take on a few nagging projects this past weekend, otherwise they wouldn’t be done until at least mid-January {but probably February if I’m being honest ;)}.

So I put my productive pants on Saturday morning and got to work.  The first thing I tackled was painting a sign for a dear bloggy friend who kindly asked for one after I posted about my cheap art for our bedroom.

Then I was determined to get some frames hung up in our hallway.  From the get-go, our hallway lacked a bit of appeal.  It was just b-o-r-i-n-g, and due to our open floor plan, you could see quite a bit of it from many areas of the house.  I tried to amp it up a bit by adding a stencil, and while it worked, I felt like it still lacked a lil' something...especially since our thermostat stuck our like a sore thumb in that space.

My solution?  Add a couple frames to the walls...and since it's Christmas time, add some free, festive printables.  I found some cute ones online, uploaded them to CVS, sized them to fit my 5 x 7 frames and picked them up the very same day.  I even had them in their frames weeks ago, I just never got around to hanging all of them.

Some were quick and easy...because I was putting them in frames already on the walls.  They went up when the rest of our Christmas decor went up.

All of the others just sat in our living room for quite some time. 

What can I say…I absolutely DESPISE hanging things.  I’m actually surprised I hung them before Christmas passed us by.  Especially since it took me months just to hang this tiny gallery wall.

Using 3M command strips and my iPhone level definitely helped to make the process much easier...on both me and my walls.

I’m super pleased with the outcome!  Now you barely notice the camouflaged thermostat.

Okay, so that’s a complete lie…but I’m going to pretend that it helps to take away from how it was all in-yo’-face before.

So after all that fun, I decided to take my efforts to South Beach our master bedroom.  I have been dying to re-arrange our bedroom for a while.  We started out here, with old furniture and not the right paint color.  Then I brought in our Craigslisted makeovers, painted the walls for the 2^nd time and switched up the layout.  Well, it was time to change things again….because I was never 100% sold on how we set things up. 

Needless to say, this went down on Saturday night…

  

What?  Making over a room isn’t your idea of a wild Saturday night???  Well it is in this house! ;) {Kidding.  Sort of.}

Stay tuned for our bedroom changes, and even some master bath stenciling!  Woot woot!!