My travel gallery wall has been 13 years in the making. Starting way back to my first overseas trip to London, I have been collecting art and taking pictures of places around the world every time I travel.
Fast forward to today, I finally have not only thousands of photos to choose from, but more importantly wall space to create a gallery wall!
I absolutely love how it came out! Each time I walk through my door when I come home, I am greeted with fond memories of countless trips.
Hours on Pinterest gave me ideas and lots of great tips of how to put the wall together. There were lots of decisions to make, from what color frames? Should all the frames be the same size? Should I just do my own pictures or mix in art and other things I have picked up? Do I display the pictures in even and measured rows and columns or go for a more free flow look?
This is what I finally decided on:
- All different sized prints
- All frames would be the same color (black)
- Mix in both my own photos and artifacts from trips
- Place photos in an organized random way (yes I know this sounds contradictory)
I’m not going to lie, the decision to use all the same color frame was largely based on the fact that I already had many black frames lying around. I did need to go out and buy several more and I wish I had checked Amazon first because of course after I finished, I found a great gallery wall set that would have been perfect!
With all my frames purchased it was time for the fun part, picking out photos to display. It was a trip down memory lane as I scanned through photos from each of my trips looking for just the right shots. The Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, the colorful buildings of Nyhavn, each shot instantly transported me back to the trip I was on when I took the photo.
It wasn’t easy narrowing down my choices. Let’s just say my list started with over 100 “favorites” and I had to widdle it down to 19…it was.not.easy.
With pictures all picked out I then had to make the tough choice of what size to print each picture. The decisions just never ended.
Once the pictures came in it was an afternoon project with a lot of help from my mum to put together the final product. I had mapped out where I wanted each of the frames and artifacts to go by placing everything on the floor first. Then I cut paper the size of each of the frames/artifacts so we could use those on the wall first for spacing. Painting tape came in handy as a way to mark the borders of where we wanted to keep the frames in between.
Paper on the wall. Pictures in frames. If it were up to me, I would have started hammering away to just get the frames up! But my patient, precise, and very Type A mum wasn’t going to let me get this far and then just slap up the frames. That woman, bless her, measured each nail hole on the back of each frame and then found where it needed to go on each corresponding paper on the wall. The patience of a saint I tell you!
The end product came out AMAZING (thank you mum)! It is my favorite part of my house hands down. So if you are wondering what to do with all of your travel photos consider putting together a gallery wall. From start to finish it took me a few weeks as I worked through each of the steps, but I loved the process. Each step held its own excitement as I got one step closer to the final gallery wall.
Have you created your own gallery wall? If so did you have a similar process to create yours? What type of theme does your wall show?
Katy
*The link in this post is an Amazon Affiliate link. I have not been asked to promote this product, I only link products I have used or would use myself.
