Gallery Wall Reveal

The day has finally come when I get to reveal my gallery wall project that I have been working on for several months now.  There is one part of it that I might redo eventually (we'll get to that later) but for now I am calling it done.  If you can't wait to see the finished product just scroll down a little bit but I thought I would start with a little bit about how I decided to arrange everything and how I hung the items.

I started by spending an evening trying different arrangements with the items on my living room floor. I know, I know you are thinking that I have a super exciting life now. I took photos of each arrangement so that I could compare them later to pick my favorite one.  The image below is of my favorite arrangement.

Next I took some newspaper and traced each item, cut them out, and then hung them on the wall with painters tape in my chosen arrangement.

I hung the pieces using several methods.  The floating bookshelves were hung with the screws provided.  The window frame came with some pretty heavy duty brackets so I chose to put a couple of screws in the wall to hang it on.  I used the painters tape measuring method to get the right screw placement.  

I just took that piece of tape and put it on the wall, made sure it was level and drilled holes for the screws.  It is a super easy fail proof method.

For the smaller, lighter items I decided to try these Command picture hanger strips.

They were really easy to use.  I just followed the instructions on the package.  They seem to be working really well.  The items are really secure.

For the other items I just used regular picture hangers.  And now for the big reveal.

You may have noticed a couple of extra items that weren't in my original arrangement.  When I finished putting everything up, there were a few empty spaces that were bothering me so I decided to add a couple more items.  The family name sign in the middle was the first one.  I used a burlap canvas that I got at Hobby Lobby and my Silhouette Portrait to make a stencil for the letters out of contact paper.  Check out the posts on North Dakota Wood Art and the Etched Glass Window Frame that I have linked at the bottom to find out more about how I did it.  This is the project that I might redo because I had a little trouble keeping my letters straight and the crookedness will probably drive me crazy eventually.

The font that I used for our name is an Art Deco font called Hill House.  The font that I used for the numbers is another Art Deco font called Gatsby.

My other addition is just a cute notecard from Target that I put in a frame from TJ Maxx.

I like the colors, the birds and the quote.

Here is a look at the other purchased items in my gallery wall.  All of the items are in frames that I bought on clearance at places like Gordmans, Target, and TJ Maxx.  The first two are book cover art prints from Zazzle.

The Alice and Wonderland print is from a really cool Etsy seller that prints on antique book pages: PRRINT.

Here is look at what my gallery wall looks like from the outside of the house.

Let me know what you think of my gallery wall.  I am so excited that it turned out so well.

I am going to take a break from porch projects for awhile so my next project involves some more organizing in my craft close.  Check back next week for that project.  In the meantime you can look at the tutorials for some of the art pieces in my gallery wall.  Just click on the pictures below.

Linked to That DIY Party and City of Creative Dreams

Two More Porch Gallery Projects

Today you get two projects for the price of one.  This is partly because I forgot to take a lot of process pictures for one of the projects, oops! First up is a simple project that involved fabric flowers and a cardboard letter.  The R is for our last name: Rogstad

I wanted to keep to a green and ivory color scheme so I went to Hobby Lobby and chose flowers that I thought would work.  I start by cutting up the flowers to get pieces to glue on the cardboard letter.

I used scissors to punch holes in the cardboard and stuck the flower stems through the holes starting with the larger flowers.

I then used a glue gun to secure the flowers in place.  I wasn't a fan of the gaps that I was seeing between the flowers that I selected so I grabbed some moss from my craft closet and began glueing it into the gaps.  I had to really play around with things until I got the look that I wanted.

Then I painted the sides and back with a gold craft paint.

You may notice in the above picture that I have this project mounted on the wall.  I have actually put up my gallery wall on the porch but you will have to wait a few days for the big reveal!  The shelf that my R is sitting on is an antique book that I purchased at an antique store a few week ago.  Umbra makes some cool floating book shelves that you can purchase here.

My next project is a decoupage project using old sheet music and the sketch feature of my Silhouette Portrait.  For this project I also used an oval wooden plaque from Hobby Lobby and gold craft paint.  I chose a flower sketch from the Silhouette online store. Then I put an oval around the sketch roughly the size of my plaque.

I then selected the sketch flower and ungrouped the shape which can be done from the object drop down menu.  I put the sheet music on my mat and loaded the mat into my Silhouette Portrait.

I removed the blade from the machine and replaced it with a black sketch pen.  I wanted the branches of my shape to be black so I selected all the other parts of the shape except that part and marked them as no cut in the cut settings window.

I then sent it to my Silhouette and made sure to select the sketch pen instead of the blade.

I then repeated the same process with a green sketch pen for the leaves and a red sketch pen for the flowers.

Finally I set all of the sketch design as no cut and selected the oval and set it to cut. I put the blade back into the machine. I used the same settings that I used to cut book pages from this project.

I then used Mod Podge to attach my sheet music oval to the wood plaque.  After it dried I put a layer of Mod Podge over the sheet music to give it a nice finish.  The ink in my sketch design did bleed a little but I liked that because it added to the character of the piece.

After the Mod Podge dried I painted the sides of the plaque with gold craft paint.

So there you have it, two more simple art projects.

Make sure to check back later this week or the beginning of next week to see the big porch gallery wall reveal!

North Dakota Wood Art

*This post is linked to That DIY Party

So I know that I have been posting a ton of projects for the porch lately and I am not done yet.  Today I've got another post about the art for the gallery wall. Here is a look at what I have so far:

You might see something new in the middle there and that is today's project.  Awhile ago I bought some wood plaques at Hobby Lobby.  It was one of those times where I had no idea what I was going to do with them but had some strange urge to buy them anyway.  They are cheap (around $3) so it wasn't any big deal.  I am happy to finally have a project that uses one of them.

I happened to see several ideas for art using states and since I had a North Dakota shape in my Silhouette library from this onesie project.  I love my home state and I thought that featuring in a piece of art would be fun. My first step in this project was to make the wood look aged so it would go with the vintage feeling of other items on the porch.

I soaked some steel wool in white distilled vinegar for about half an hour (it might have been more but I lost track of time:) The steel wool will break down a little bit and kind of create a wood stain with the vinegar.

I donned some gloves and applied several coats of the vinegar with the steel wool.

The wood looked like this after sitting over night.

 I used my good old contact paper as a stencil again.  The settings for cutting contact paper with the Silhouette are speed:8, blade:3, and thickness:4.

I then painted inside the stencil with some sample paint that I had.  It is Behr Oyster.

After letting it dry a little bit I pulled the contact paper off.  After it dried fully I applied a coat of matte Mod Podge just to protect the paint.

So that's it.  It was another super easy art project.  If you want to check out my other recent porch projects just click on the pictures below