Hi friends!
I am excited to share the details of my latest home decorating project with you today. Are you ready for it? It’s this gallery of some of my favorite family photos and I love the way it turned out!
How to Create a Budget Friendly Gallery Wall
I am a firm believer that you don’t have to spend a bunch of money to create a stylish home that you love. This gallery wall project is a good example of just that.
The total money spent on the impactful gallery of treasured family photos came in just under $100. I splurged for the “ready in minutes” prints at Walmart because I was impatient. I could have saved about $20 if I had ordered my enlargements ahead of time. Oh well, it was worth it to me to get this project completed.
The hallway leading to the back of our house and our family room has a funny little wall that has a sharp angle.
I knew this was the perfect space for the grid gallery I was envisioning. I used White Ribba frames from Ikea and wanted to do black and white prints for that contrast I love so much. A quick measure helped me figure out that I could fit 6 frames.
The hardest part was figuring out which photos to use. I wanted to the gallery to be a casual collection of family pictures so I came up with a rough plan for what to use and then started searching for 6 photos to use. I wanted one of each of the kids and settled on these:
Then I looked for a family photo and decided on this group selfie from our vacation to Maui last year:
A Family photo gallery wouldn’t be complete without a picture of Lucy, and I love this one as it shows her quirky little personality
Lastly I wanted to use this picture taken by my friend Felicia during from our Family photo session in the Fall..
Most of the photos I wanted to use were color pictures, so I edited each picture in google photos and used the Vista filter.
How I hung the gallery
After I selected the photos and put them into the frames, it was time to hang them on the wall. A Grid Gallery wall like this one is tricky because you want the frames to be lined up and spaced equally. If you are not familiar with Ribba frames, they are a real pain in the ass to hang.
Ikea, decided to change these frames a while ago and now they don’t come with hanging wire, instead there is a little sawtooth nail hanging thingie. The problem is that there is a lot of space between the back of the frame and the wall, so hanging these bad boys is tricky, I learned that you have to leave the nail sticking out from the wall quite a bit.
I bought a picture hanging kit and used the big fat nails and they worked well. I also used these double sided photo squares to further secure the frames to the wall. They are in a high traffic area and I didn’t want them to be knocked off the wall!
Figuring out where to put these nails on the wall was pretty easy thanks to this tutorial I followed from The DIY Playbook. You can read all the details about that here. Essentially you use wrapping paper with a grid on it to figure out the placement of your nail holes, and then you tape it up on the wall to give yourself a template. This made the hanging process so easy, I can’t recommend it enough!
I love the way this gallery wall looks, it is such a nice focal point when you enter out home! The cool thing is that the kids really liked it too!
Thanks so much for reading! If you would like to try a similar gallery wall and you have any questions, please leave me a comment below!
xo, Kerri
