Full disclosure: We lived in our house for nearly 5 years before hanging anything on the walls. I'm a big fan of art and it's important to me that the things we hang on our walls make me genuinely happy. Unfortunately that outlook turned into my delaying decorating at all because I became so obsessed with finding the perfect pieces.
Luckily my husband decided he had had enough and told me he was going to start hanging things on the walls because he was tired of living in an institution. I caved and we decided to make a gallery wall incorporating some of our favorite family photos (some taken by professionals, some just with our iPhones) and, my favorite part, our kids' artwork. I'm so happy with how it turned out and wanted to share some tips for how to accomplish it on your own!
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1. Buy inexpensive similar-looking but not identical frames. They don't have to be exactly the same and they don't have to be expensive. Craft stores ALWAYS have BOGO deals on great looking frames. We went with a variety of shapes and sizes and I intend on adding even more shapes and sizes as it grows. My favorite ones are the "floating" frames where you can see the color of the wall behind them. It looks like it's part of the picture frame, adds depth because you can see shadows, and can make a 59-cent photo you took with your iPhone look like a piece of genuine artwork.
2. Choose frames in colors that complement each other. With our gray walls and the other colors in the room, we decided to stick to white and gold for our frames. We put up a black one but it just didn't look great with what we already had so we took it down. I'd consider adding some other metallic colors in and possibly some grays in the future as well. Some other combinations I think would work: black and white, wood and black, light wood and white, mixed metallics, navy and white.
3. Mix low-end with high-end. Right now we have a mix of professional photos and ones we took ourselves. All of them, though, were printed right off a website for under $2 each. (OK, with the exception of the life-size family portrait I have on the right side which I have no explanation for - I lost my mind one day and thought that would be an appropriate thing to buy) As far as art is concerned, we have mostly things our kids have made mixed in with some meaningful prints I've collected over the years. I want to mix in some more "professional" art but if I never get around to it, that's fine too!
4. Consider an "organic" layout. This part was really important to me because one of the problems I have with gallery walls is that they get quickly outdated when they incorporate family photos. I want our gallery wall to be ever-evolving. I don't want it to be a timestamp of my kids at ages 3 and 5. I want to add in frames and continually print pictures and add in things my kids have made. We purposely left some open space throughout the layout with the intention of adding photos and artwork over the years and as our family grows and evolves. That would be much harder for us to do with a "grid" layout so we went the organic route. We have a top limit and a bottom limit, and beyond that, there aren't any rules for how frames are placed.
5. Choose meaningful pieces. We have family photos taken professionally every year and I can't say enough about how much I love them. But that doesn't mean I want our walls to be covered with only these professional photos of us in coordinating outfits. We chose a bunch of photos that some people probably wouldn't put on their walls because we just love them. In one of them, our boys are sitting in a pile of dirt, a bag of chips in each one's hands, not smiling at the camera. I have no explanation for why we love this photo - we just do. Two of the "art" pieces that we have framed are things that my boys made me for this past Christmas. My 5yo worked on his for weeks, hiding it from me and working on it throughout the day. These are the kinds of things we want to be surrounded by. I spent 5 years with nothing on the walls because I wanted whatever I picked to be perfect and meaningful, and there's nothing that I could've spent a ton of money on that would even compare to what we have now.
6. Mix it up! You don't need to stick to one type of art. I love that we mixed photography with art prints, kids' art, typographical art, mirrors, ceramics, and we even have some live plants now which give me life!
And now for the main event! Some of my kid art favorites from our walls!
 Enzo's Christmas gift to me |  Rocco's Christmas gift to me |
 "Man standing on the earth looking at the sky" by Enzo, age 4; fake flower planter made from recyclables by Rocco, age 3; West Elm planter with real ivy. |  Enzo's self-portrait, age 4 |
What type of stuff do you have hanging on your walls? Have you attempted a gallery wall?
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