Living Room Gallery Wall

I have been working on getting things settled in our new living room area after the big room switcharoo, and the first thing that I have finished is a new gallery wall. I really like gallery walls. In fact, I already have a couple in my home; one in the side entry, and one in my girls' bedroom. But this one in the living room is different. It's more structured, linear, instead of being more haphazard like my other gallery walls. 

Believe it or not, I had all of these things in a closet. They were all just sitting there waiting to be used. I did have to make a couple of changes using paint, but for the most part these items were ready to go. The white frame with the gray mat actually had a blue mat. I painted to the mat gray to go with my color scheme. I made the "Be Brave" sign from scrap wood, and the two canvases with our monogram and the ampersand on them were a DIY project. More on that in a minute.

I usually like to visualize what the gallery wall is going to look like, so I put everything on the floor and played around with it until I got the look I wanted, keeping all of the items contained within a rectangle.

Then,  I traced each item and cut it out, marking where the nail hole goes for each. 

Then, I hung the paper with tape , making sure to get the spacing correct, then I used the nail hole guides to put my nails in the correct place. 

And ta-da! My new gallery wall. They really are fairly easy to do as long as you take the time to make them right and get the correct spacing of your items. I like very little space between items. To me, that gives it greater impact in the room. 

Now more about the canvases. 

My mom had given me two canvases that she didn't want anymore because she redecorated. Even though they weren't necessarily my style or fit into my decor, I kept them thinking that I could use them again somehow. So, here's what I did. 

I had a vinyl monogram tucked away for another project I had in mind, but decided I didn't want to use it for that. So, I put the monogram directly onto the canvas, then painted the whole thing gray.  I want to bring some yellow into the living room, so I thought just a small pop of it would work great.  I used a similar technique for the ampersand. 

Here is what the canvas looked like before. I needed a vertical picture so I turned it sideways and printed out an ampersand on cardstock and taped it to the canvas. Vinyl works much better, but I had to use what I had on hand.  I really love the way both came out.

I also used black and white photos, and free printables I found online to finish off the gallery wall. 

Here is a sneak peak in the small mirror of another thing I have added to the living room. I will share an update on the room soon.