Creating a Photo Gallery Wall

Whether you have a new baby, a growing family, or just a ton of great pictures from a fun trip, a gallery wall can be a great way to put all of these beautiful pictures on display! 

While I was still pregnant, I knew that we were going to have lots of cute pictures to come with our little baby and we would want to put them on display for all to see! I decided a gallery wall would be a great way to do this. 

I searched pinterest and found tons of examples!

With a baby not even 2 months old at the time, we already had an abundance of photos and narrowing down the ones I would like to display was a task in itself! I eventually decided on 17 photos - 11 4X6 photos, 3 5X7 photos, and 3 8X10 photos. 

 For my gallery wall I knew that I would want my frames to look somewhat similar but still be unique from each other. I did some searching for gallery wall photo frame sets, but wasn't happy with what I found. None of them had the look I was wanting and rarely were big enough. They also were much more expensive than what I was wanting to spend. 

So I put my hubby to work to find us some frames! And he found the perfect ones at Ikea! Below are the styles we decided on. Not drastically different, but all white and different enough. The wall that we chose for our gallery wall is a bit of an 'off-white' so white frames aren't the best choice, but the best long term choice for us for hopefully matching in a single family home someday as we currently own a townhouse. 

Now that I had my frames, I set out my pictures in the arrangement I wanted them to be on the wall. I was working with a large, blank wall, so I wasn't concerned about space or running out of room. I knew I could just space the frames closer together or farther apart to make them fit. 

Then I put the pictures in the frames and created paper sheets that matched the size of each frame. For the 8X10 and 5X7 frames I had to tape a few pieces of paper together to get the exact size. 

I then taped the 'paper frames' to the wall in the same arrangement. Because I chose to use 3M stickies to hang the pictures instead of nails, I kept the tape. If I would have used nails, I would have replaced the tape with a nail after the papers were on the wall in the desired spot. Then the frames could have been hung and the paper just pulled down. 

Because I kept the tape and was using 3M picture hanging strips, I took down each 'paper frame' 1 at a time. After I would take down 1 'paper frame' I would immediately replace it with the actual picture frame. 

When I was all done it looked like this. The white frames would really 'pop' if the wall were another color but for the sake of selling our house in the not too distant future, we decided not to paint an accent wall here. 

I love love love getting to see these cute pictures every day when I walk past them! I wish that there was a good location for them to have been put downstairs so our guests could see them too, but upstairs had the best wall space. 

In just a month I'll already be replacing some of the pictures when Christian gets his 3 month pictures taken.