Framing Things Up / Our Homemade Gallery Wall

When I started to work on my "gallery wall" or putting art on the wall or whatever it shall be called, I became very obsessed with the right way to frame everything. I have used cheap flimsy frames all my life and I felt like that was the wrong route to go with art I care about. I knew that A.I. Friedman had some good ready-made gallery style frames but what about big pieces? We decided to hit up a couple of thrift stores looking for hand-me-down big-time frames and sure enough we found a couple of good ones. We also had this one piece that we had been holding onto a while that had broken glass -- the framer down the road from us quoted a pretty reasonable amount for glass replacement and when I asked him about custom framing for similar pieces, I was surprised to learn that the custom job from start to finish with the metal frames would be around $150. I am not sure if our budget is ready to soar that high just yet but I actually think that is pretty reasonable when all is said and done. Having the used frames is great but it takes work to fit them and I could not find a ready-made large format frame for the life of me. So first came our selection of the pieces which was the easy part! Next came framing them, then the visualizing process of them on the wall, and of course before we hung anything, Dave had to find the studs so that we could properly do the job (or at least know what portion of the wall we were dealing with). This process of his required a magnet and lots of post-its -- I even kind of liked how the walls looked with all of the post-its (+ we shared some laughs about how in it he was) and I highly recommend doing this so that the pieces can securely be hung.

For the "gallery wall" we created, we wanted to leave space to add to it because we are wall art fanatics and need the room to grow our collection. We used 4 vintage lithographs (a couple which we have extras of in the shop), one antique etching of Mozart, a mid century circus poster, and original artwork from Etsy artisans.

I started questioning if the eclectic mix of art would work but in the end Dave and I both couldn't be happier with how it turned out! Naturally we love the mix of old and new and it feels vibrant, unique, and totally us.