Gallery Wall and Other Art

I have been wanting to do a "galley wall" and just do more to decorate my walls for awhile now. My sister Kristi, who should be an interior designer, graciously offered to help.

Here is one wall's "before."

I had purchased two signs at a discount, knowing I wanted to do something different with them and just use the boards instead of starting from scratch.

The first one:

We turned this sign into a hook for the dog leashes. Kristi came up with the fabulous idea of putting each dog's paw print for the respective leash.

Joseph helped, against his will.

We found, through trial and error, and it is better to brush the paint onto the dog's foot. You can see for the two paw prints for Tiny which one we pushed her paw into the paint and which one was painted on (we painted on Osa's but it's smudged because that dog has hair everywhere). After that piece of the project was complete, I needed to secure the hooks.

I used screws with bolts so I could secure them tightly and not have them move around.

We ended up removing the harnesses since it looked cluttered, but I'm happy with the end result.

The second sign:

I asked Kristi what we should do about this board. I was worried it was too long. She painted it.

Kristi is a perfectionist. I always find it amusing. I took this photo and was typing a Snapchat and Kristi said, "Are you writing, 'Painting freehand is stressing this perfectionist out?'" It was super creepy because that was exactly right.

Look at that glint in her eye. She's reading your mind right now.

I had to remove and re-add the hardware so that it hung vertically instead of horizontally. I originally wanted it on the gallery wall but I loved where Kristi put it even more.

For the final piece, I unscrewed the wall art from the  back:

I didn't think we could hang it on my gallery wall because that wall is white. Kristi came up with another fabulous idea of adding ribbon to the edges.

And we hung it next to my sea painting, which is on a grey wall.

The "leftover" pieces really came in handy. I'm using the back piece to clothespin coupons and such in the office (I had the tiny clothespins leftover from that baby shower game where you can't say certain words or you steal the clothespin):

Do you remember my hearts (blog here)? I re-used the attachments holding the wall art onto the mesh:

And after a few different suggestions and tweaks...

My gallery wall is complete.

I couldn't have done it without Kristi! I am really happy with it. I may add a few more framed photos, but I think it looks fine how it is too.