Decorating with Pictures at C.R.A.F.T.

I’m so excited to introduce Jamie to you today. She has some fabulous tips on creating a gallery wall in her concrete walled rental–LOVE THIS! She put a lot of heart into her display, and I love the stories behind it. I’m happy to now call her my local blogger friend (in real life);)

Hi Capturing Joy readers! I’m Jamie, from C.R.A.F.T. It’s a nifty little acronym for Creating Really Awesome Free Things. I recently took one of Kristen’s awesome Say No to Auto classes, but please don’t judge the following pics as a product of her class… they were all shot before I knew how to work the M! Just sayin’ : )

For me, decorating with people I love is a no brainer. I heart pictures of my friends and family. In our Florida rental (we moved back to TX in Dec. 2012), putting holes in the wall was literally almost impossible. The walls of the 16 story condo building were concrete. I had to find a way. We were 1000+ miles away from the people we loved, and I wanted them on my wall! I ended up using 3M picture hanging strips like a manic. Check it out. Every picture except the 2 really big ones were hung with 3M strips. They worked like a charm!

For our Florida rental, I chose to hang mostly black and white pictures with mostly white frames. As you can see, there were a few exceptions, but it made for a cohesive-ish gallery wall. I wanted the picture frames to feel like wall paper and go from floor to ceiling. By wallpaper, I just mean the frames make a pseudo repetitive pattern, like this: (That’s Andy, my husband!)

The picture above makes me smile because each frame holds a memory. I hung a ton of portraits of our friends and family at different stages in our lives (Andy with his mama when he was itty bitty, me and my siblings 15 years ago, etc… ) But, I also added sentimental things like a post card from Andy’s dad to Andy as a little boy, the Texas cut out I made, and all of the cross stitches are hand made by my mama. Gallery walls can be made a bazillion different ways. In my opinion, you can not go wrong with a gallery wall as long as when you look at it, it makes you happy! And since we didn’t know anyone in Florida, when we did have people over, they loved looking and asking about our friends and family back home. The gallery wall was a great conversation starter!

See the arrow in the picture above? Those are tiny toy cars that Andy used to play with as a child. I sat them on top of the post card from his dad. Cute, right? Here are some tips and tricks I use when creating a gallery wall:

• Spray paint makes any frame better. Pick a color (or a few) and give your frames a fresh coat for a cohesive look.
• Don’t freak out about holes. They can easily be filled (white toothpaste) or you can always use 3M strips.
• If the picture makes you smile, hang it up.
• Hang up old pictures of when you and your husband were little… it brings back fun memories. I had one up of my dad from his college football days!
• Don’t pay full price for a frame, pretty please! You can always get frames half off at Hobby Lobby or Michaels! (Here’s how to get white frames from Michael’s for $2.06 each!)
• Change out the pictures as often as you’d like. It’s fun to have new pics in your gallery wall.
• Switch pics for sayings and vice versa. You can see my “Squeeze the Day” frame, next to the TX cutout, above.
• Spruce up the wall for holidays. Change out pics for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, etc…

Thanks, Kristen, for letting me share my floor to ceiling gallery wall obsession!

You can find Jamie on her blog Creating Really Awesome Free Things/facebook/pinterest/twitter/

{If you’ve missed posts in this month long series, head on over to Decorating with Pictures for thumbnails of all contributors thus far.}

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Kristen Duke

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