Wow, welcome to week 3024 in quarantine, right? It certainly feels like that! One thing I’ve learned from this is the more time I have, the less I seem to get done. The lure of, “there’s always tomorrow” is a real struggle. When one day melts into the next, it’s easy to put stuff off because it feels like there’s plenty of time, you know?
Well this week I finally found my breaking point! I snapped out of the daze of mundanity and dusted off my long neglected “to do” list.
As I looked at the things I’ve been putting off, I found my plans for this wall art arrangement I wanted to do in my office since last Fall. I’ve been working from home for a long time there just wasn’t a huge push to get this project done.
The wall in question is behind me, so I don’t see it when I’m working.
Since My focus is primarily on helping others make their home pretty, I often neglect doing that for myself. It’s a classic case of “the Shoemaker’s kids have no shoes” but, at chez Michael, it’s the decorator’s house is never done…
And, given the fact that sprucing it up with store bought art isn’t going to fly right now, I thought this is the perfect opportunity to undertake a quarantine project with stuff I have on hand.
So off I went to forage in the attic, garage, closets, and craft drawers to see if I could make a go of this gallery wall layout I’ve been tossing around.
Let me show you how to get a fabulous gallery wall for no money. Yep, $0.00 was spent on this project and I’ll let you be the judge of how successful it is, lol! Let’s get into it:
If you need some inspiration to get you going, Pinterest is a great place to start. Type gallery wall in the search bar at the top. You’ll see endless iterations of galley wall ideas.
Since this is about using items you already have, I would start by compiling all the things you want to include in your gallery wall layout. Bring the actual items into the space to see how they fit. Pay attention to their size and shape, how they work with the other décor and lighting and edit as needed.
As I mentioned up top, I’ve had this idea kicking around in my head for a while and I knew that I had a rough idea of what I wanted to include. I remembered that I put together a mood board and I had to dig through my files to find it. (You can check it out in my Instagram feed @interiorsmh by scrolling down quite a ways).
Once I located the file, I decided I still really liked the concept, so I went for it with a couple of little tweaks. First off, the saturated color had to go. I originally thought I wanted that but it didn’t work for me.
Find a Centerpiece
One of the easiest ways to curate a gallery wall is to find a center piece to act as the anchor for the arrangement. This can be a piece of art, a tapestry, photograph, whatever you decide.
For my center piece, I chose this giant picture of my fur baby, Marqui. It’s similar to the inspiration picture I found when I was planning this project months ago and the funny thing is, at that time, I didn’t have her in my life yet.
To recreate the look, I took this picture of her soon after I adopted her and I cropped it into a poster sized print on Canva.
Here’s how I did it:
First, I uploaded her picture in Canva and I adjusted the color. She is a gorgeous fawn color in real life, but I wanted to have a neutral color scheme for this project because I have a lot of color in other parts of the office.
After that, I increased the size of her picture to fill up half a piece of 8.5” x 11” standard printer paper. Now, in order to make the picture twice the size of the 8.5”, you can only fit one half the image on the page, make sense? To make the picture 17” wide, you have to have two halves in different corners. Like this:
Then you want to export the file to your computer so you can print it out on regular printer paper at home.
The nice thing about Canva is that your image resolution will remain the same at any size if you export the file as a png instead of a jpeg.
Once I printed it out, I carefully cut both sides of the image and pasted them down onto a piece of standard poster paper from my craft closet. The frame was up in the attic with an old poster in it from 20 years ago, so I repurposed that.
You can do this with a picture of the kids, or anything else and make it any size you want.
I like this look because it’s close to my inspiration picture and this is how I usually see her when she peeks up at the end of my desk. I usually only see the top of her head, so adorable!
If you want to check out a step by step tutorial on how to use Canva to create images of any size and shape, here’s a post I did to create a grid style gallery wall in my bedroom to walk you through everything you need to know.
Add Word Art (or Something Else You Love)
I enjoy a fun eclectic gallery wall layout, so one easy way to do that is by bringing in word art.
You can create inspirational quotes or a personal motto or anything else you like to apply to your life. I did a mockup in Canva for a personal motto, “get shit done”. Pardon the profanity but that is my motto. It reminds me that no matter what, I show up and get to work and that’s how I roll.
Since I had a limited number of empty frames at my house, I had to get a bit creative with my composition. I found this frame in my attic and I liked the narrow shape, so I decided to use it.
This time I did not print out my design from Canva but instead, I used a scrap piece of white poster board, some gold stick on letters I had in a drawer and a sheet of gold shelf liner from my kitchen. (This was a whole house do-it-yourself compilation!)
The frame already had a mat, but it had colorful stripes that didn’t go with my plan. So, I took scissors and cut strips of gold shelf liner to cover them up. The liner has a self-adhesive back, so it stuck like glue to the mat.
After that, I figured out the center of the poster board and started working from the center of my motto up and down to get this configuration. Cleaver, who knows? But it works for me.
Mix up Shapes and Apply the Rule of 3
Next up, I wanted to bring in a couple of round elements. I found these gold rings I had hanging on a hook in my closet. I had intended to use them for another project that I didn’t get around to.
I knew I wanted to bring in a bit of Boho so I tied 3 of the rings together to create this cascading size of circles and then I tied yarn to the rings to make a funky macramé type wall hanging. (now I am no expert macramé knot tier, but I think it worked out). I spent about 20 minutes putting it together, easy.
The next round element I brought in was this clock I’ve always had in my office. It had lot’s of colors all around it but that look didn’t go with what I wanted to achieve so I took more of that gold shelf liner from the word art and covered all the colors.
I made a paper template to get the shape of the area I wanted to cover and just covered each one of the 50 different color shapes. It ended up looking like a gold metal sun burst clock and I love it now!
Add One More Shape
The last part of the composition was adding in one more shape, a square. While I was up in the attic, I found this square frame and I liked that it was black to match the other frames and that it was a different shape.
The rule of 3 works for gallery walls and picture arranging just as it does for accessorizing the décor in your room. Here, I have 3 shapes: square, rectangle and circle.
I wanted to try my hand a doing one of those continuous line drawings like this here by Niels Kiene Salventius but, I couldn’t get it right.
Courtesy of Behance: Niels Kiene Salventius
So, instead, I decided to try my hand at drawing a hand throwing up the peace sign. That symbol is part of my personal brand, so I sat down and sketched out my idea on a scrap piece of paper.
When I finished it, I cut down that same piece of poster board from the word art to the size of the frame and drew my hand on it again in pencil and the I outlined it with a black Sharpie marker. Boom, my version of line art.
Now, I didn’t have another square frame to match the first one, so I cut a piece of black foam board form my craft closet to match the size of the frame. This last piece was another Boho element: the phases of the moon.
Once again, I found a picture of the moon online and imported it to Canva where I sized it up to fit 3 across and 3 down on the foam board. That’s 9 moon pictures that I printed out on my home printer and then I just free hand drew the shapes to cover the portion of the moon in the different phases and glued them to the foam board. I applied the last of my gold shelf liner in thin strips to segment off the rows and that was it.
There you go, how to get a fabulous gallery wall for no money!
1. Find a Centerpiece
2. Add Word Art (or something else you love)
3. Mix up the Shapes and Apply the Rule of 3.
See, with a little creativity, following a simple formula, and the help of the internet, you can avoid being bored and still do creative projects while in quarantine.
I’d love to hear what you think of this post. Leave me a comment below and tell me what you like, don’t like etc. If you’re working on a wall arrangement, I’d love to hear all about it. What did you do that brought your style to life? What lessons did you learn or things that you loved that surprised you? I’m all ears!
Until next week, stay safe, take care of each other and keep your dreams big for your small house.
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What to Read Next
The Right Way to Hang Wall Art
There are a lot of techniques out there to help simplify the art of hanging wall art… I know, bad pun. If you’ve tried to symmetrically line up pictures without a plan, I’m sure you’ve experienced some frustration. There always seems to be one or two pictures off. One’s slightly higher then the one next to it or off in some other way…
The same could be said for asymmetrical installations; if something is off, it’s still really noticeable, right? Well, what if there was a super easy way to get your art up on the wall and aligned just the way you want it the first time? Best of all, you won't have to save this project for a long weekend cause you won't be patching and painting all the extra holes you would've made...
Stop trying to eyeball where stuff goes. Let’s get into the right way to hang wall art so you can save time and leave your frustrations on the curb! This technique will work with any type of arrangement you wish to install whether it’s a symmetrical grouping or an asymmetrical grouping. It will work with any size wall or any shape of art that you wish to use.
I chose to install an asymmetrical grouping on my wall. Here’s the skinny:
1: Make Templates
That’s right, make a paper template of each piece you want to hang. You can use newspaper, craft paper, printer paper, cardboard.
• Lay your art on the paper and trace the shape onto the paper
• Cut the shape out with scissors and write what the piece is so you know where to place it on the wall later.
2: Measure The Location Of The Picture Hangers
• Once you have your templates cut out, turn your picture or art work over and measure where the picture hanger is positioned on the back.
• Measure down from the top of the piece and make a note of that measurement. Then measure the position of the hanger from either side of the piece as well.
3: Transfer The Measurements On To The Template
After you’ve determined the measurements on the pieces themselves, transfer those measurements on to the front of the templates that you labeled earlier.
Michael is Principal designer and blogger at Michael Helwig Interiors in beautiful Buffalo, New York. Since 2011, he’s a space planning expert, offering online interior e-design services for folks living in small homes, or for those with awkward and tricky layouts. He’s a frequent expert contributor to many National media publications and news outlets on topics related to decorating, interior design, diy projects, and more. Michael happily shares his experience to help folks avoid expensive mistakes and decorating disappointments. You can follow him on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook @interiorsmh.
