The Art of the Gallery Wall

In our new house, it seems I am definitely more drawn to gallery walls than I was in our previous home.  Maybe it's the fact that we have more wall space to play with.  Perhaps it's the taller ceilings in the living room and office.  Maybe it's because I do like the look of clean lines and empty space, so the walls in the master bedroom and the hallway are left untouched, and I tend to group our remaining wall decor into gallery walls instead.

Our wall decor is made up of pictures, sentimental items, family phrases, Bible verses, canvasses, typographic letters, and art by my husband.

Let's start in our living room where I have three spaces set up with gallery walls.

The first is by the window.  A bentwood rocker adds the finishing touch to this corner and makes it a cozy reading nook.

The item farthest left is a painting my husband made for his mom, and she matted it and framed it for my birthday one year.  The top right is our last name, Petersen, crocheted by a friend of my step father-in-law.  It was a wedding gift.  The right bottom picture is a split photo of Toomer's Corner in Auburn.  The left side of the picture is Toomer's Corner in the olden days, and the right side of the picture is Toomer's Corner present day.

The next area of the living room featuring a gallery wall is one of the main walls in the living room.

This is the biggest gallery wall thus far in our home.

I arranged all artwork on the floor and moved pieces around there to find the layout I wanted most.  I played with straight lines, and breaking planes, and mixing up the textures and sizes of objects.  I am very happy with how it turned out.

The top row is made up of a canvas photo of my youngest son, a metal decor sign from Magnolia Market, a multi-opening picture frame from Target (I swap out some pictures in this frame periodically, as the boys grow older.  I keep our wedding pictures in the spots they're in though-- I don't change those out), a watercolor of flowers by my sons for my birthday last year, a Family sign with the Bible Verse "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."  The bottom row is another multi-opening frame (JCPenney) with wedding pictures and pictures from our first Christmas together, and from a wedding we attending near the beginning of our marriage), a handprint sun canvas painting from my boys for my birthday this year, a canvas photo of my oldest son (taken right before his Type One Diabetes diagnosis before his 2nd birthday), a HOME sign that says "May you be blessed when you enter, and blessed when you go out," a three-opening frame of my oldest son as a baby (I need to make one for my youngest), and a timeline piece showing the calendar dates of our first date, our engagement date, and our wedding date.

LOVE this wall!

The next gallery wall is in our foyer.

I mixed a wide canvas print that I got from TJMaxx several years ago (it initially hung above our fireplace at our first home), a painting that Aaron made for me to hang at my desk at work (which I got to bring home to enjoy last August once I started working from home), and a wooden typographic P from Hobby Lobby.  Mixing textures, but grouping similar colors together gave this display the look I was going for.

The final gallery wall (for the moment) is in my home office.

My office space is filled with motivational sayings and sentimental pieces.  I'm starting the journey of chasing my dream job, and I made sure my desk space was filled with encouragement.  The ceiling in this room is vaulted, so it left some good height to work with.

I kept the bolder colored artwork for our living area, but I wanted to make sure the office wall was simple and clean.  I chose to focus on blacks and whites, with just a little color thrown in.

My diploma is at the top right, then an Amish star that I got from Pennsylvania Dutch country several years ago, and a metal capital R (originally owned by my Aunt, and I received it since our first names start with the same letter). The second row is made up of a friendship sign that one of my best friends gave to me in 2010 (it says: Good friends are like angels; You don't have to see them to know they are there), a letter of jumbled up letters and numbers that Michael "typed" for us when he was less than a year old (somehow, he pressed the right keys to copy and paste a Seattle Seahawks logo, and I can't bear to throw this away. Ever. So I framed it), a print by Paper Jam Press , and a framed print from Hobby Lobby that says "All I need today is a little bit of coffee & a whole lot of Jesus." #truth

Coming up with ways to display family mementos, photos, and inspirational pieces was a lot of fun!

Until Next Time,
Much love, Reba