Creating a Gallery Wall When Nothing is Level

Do You Know Where this Expression Comes From?

Half of my family is from the south. I lived south of the Mason-Dixie Line in my formative years. I like to think its the reason I have such a “colorful” personality as my little Momma (who is from the North) likes to say.

My grandpa was a real southern gentleman. He used to say, in his soft southern drawl, that in the south, we don’t ask if there are any “crazies” in a person’s family, we just ask someone to point out which ones they are.

“Half a bubble off” he used to say. Its a phrase my sister and I use ~~occasionally~~ too much.

It was only after I moved in to an old, old house where nothing is level, did I learn where the expression came from. Everything in my house is at least a half a bubble off. It’s probably why I feel so at home here…

Entry Way Makeover

Earlier this week I shared photos of my entry way makeover.

And the arrival of my Peek a Boo table…

A big part of this project was my Gallery Wall.

This space is so very tricky to work with for a number of reasons:

It is narrow but the ceilings are 10 ft. high
My family wanted me to mostly feature my own drawings, pastels and watercolors
This 115 year old house is far from level

This last one is super tricky if the handy Andy in your life is all about using a level.

We go round and round whenever its time to hang anything inside or outside this house. And I have to seek help because those wretched little anchors just won’t cooperate with me.

I insist we have to eye ball things and hang things so they look level even if they are a half a bubble off.

Mr. Handy wants to measure, measure, measure and level, level, level.

I don’t think it makes sense to level things if they don’t look level.

Am I right girls?

So I did all of the measuring and hanging on my gallery wall on my own.

(Sure hoping they stay up on that wall or I will never hear the end of it!)

6 Tips for Creating a Gallery Wall

To help keep you from learning things the hard way (like yours truly always seems to do), here are six quick tips I picked up including one I wished I had heard about before I tackled this project…

Start with the piece (or even two pieces) you want to be your focal point(s). The ones that will anchor everything together. In my case it was one of my lighthouse watercolors. We spend part of our summers in northern Michigan and I’m always gawking at the lighthouses. I finally painted a few this winter. (Harder than they look my friends…)

2. Use frames of the same or similar color. I framed most of mine in black but with different textures and designs on the frames. A few just didn’t work in black, but I kept them dark.

3. Add interest with texture. For weeks I shuffled my paintings all over this wall. Along with a few that I didn’t end up using in here. It wasn’t until I bought “The Stream” (the piece right above my lighthouse) from a friend who is an uber-talented fiber artist that I realized what was missing: texture. The only texture I really had was the rough acrylic paint in my little lamb. My friend’s fabulous piece gave the wall some dimension and kept it from feeling too flat.

4. Mix up the sizes. This part takes a lot of patience and more than a little bit of wine to get right. Use different sized paintings and objects and just keep on shufflin’ until you like what you see. Here is the smartest idea for how to do this that I saw after mine was done and hung. Its from AS Hanging Display Systems. Trace an outline of each frame or object you want to hang on brown paper. Use those instead of the trying to hold and juggle all those frames at once.

If only I had spotted this before I drove myself a little nutty and emptied half the wine cellar…

6. Add a little sparkle. I’ve confessed more than once on this blog that I love things that sparkle! In this case, I knew I needed something shiny and funky to finish this wall up. I found an unfinished wooden arrow at Michael’s, grabbed some of Miss Martha’s Pale Bronze Metallic paint and got busy.