Welcome to Housewife Hospitality!
For my first post, I wanted to welcome you into my home the same what that our guests arrive – through our foyer.
The Inspiration
When my husband and I moved into our home we knew we wanted to incorporate family photos into our design plan. We both agreed that we’d prefer them to be placed somewhere that has high visibility, but isn’t in a main living space. We realized the perfect place was right when you walk into our home, in the small nook of our foyer right against the stairwell. Due to it’s unique wall shape – I thought a gallery wall would give you an instant focal point, and really make a statement in our entryway.
Buying the Frames
I immediately went to HomeGoods to find the perfect frames for this DIY project. My vision was a clean, simple & minimal aesthetic which lended perfectly to a matching set of white gallery frames. Given the triangular shape of our wall I knew I would need various sized frames to evenly fill the space. When I got to HomeGoods, and saw their selection, I adjusted my plan to incorporate a mix of different white gallery frames in order to complete the project in a day. Immediately I was drawn to a set of floating frames. Visually they looked like the photo was suspended in the air, as it was held in place by two panes of glass. I also loved that you could see through the glass and would see the contrast of our gray wall color where a mat would typically be. I bought four in this style – one 8×10, one 5×7, and two 4x4s. I also opted for a set of three 8x10s in a traditional white matted gallery frame. For my final frame I went with a slightly larger 8×10 frame featuring a beautiful double mat.
Now that everything was home – it was time for the fun part! Finalizing the design layout of the frames! I layed out all of our frames on the dining room table. I used several sheets of large packing paper, that I had on hand, and cut the paper to the exact size of each frame. I labeled each paper with the dimensions and frame style so I could envision which frames had clear floating glass and which had the white mats, so I could better visually balance the display.
Planning the Design
I grabbed my painters tape and started plotting it out by taping the paper frames to the wall. The painters tape was fantastic because I could easily move the papers around to figure out what placements I preferred most. Typically you would leave more space between each frame, but I opted for a tighter fit, because I really wanted the wall to feel full. I ended up landing on a variation of a boxed layout for our gallery wall, keeping straight clean lines on two of the sides. I also made it so the mated frames anchored the grouping in the lower corner, and the clear frames floated off to the sides.
Hanging the Frames
Once I had my layout finalized I marked on the wall with a pencil where each hook would go, and then hung them all up one at a time. My strategy for hanging them was to go in order along the two clean lines on the left side of the wall and on the bottom of the wall in an L shaped pattern. As I hung each one, I would check to make sure they were in a nice straight line. There was a little bit of trial and error in hanging them up, but all in all, it was fairly easy to make adjustments, and none of the extra nail holes ended up being visible.
Once my frames were all mounted to the wall I took note of the sizes and orientations of each frame. The gallery wall was starting to really take shape! I was so pleased at how I was able to balance the clear and solid frames in a way that looked cohesive, but was interesting enough for your eyes to seamlessly wonder along where the photos would be.
Selecting the Photographs
When it came time to select the photos – my husband really wanted to be involved in the process. It only took a minute to realize narrowing our entire life down to just 8 photos was not going to work. It was a real life MySpace top 8 situation. Then it occurred to me that if we did the photos seasonally, for Fall, Winter, Spring & Summer that it would allow us to feature 32 different photos, and enhance our seasonal decor game, without taking up much space.
I used my iPhone to create four seasonal shared albums for us to put all of our photos together in the same space. Selecting photos on the iPhone using their search feature made the process of picking pictures incredibly easy. We typed in various vacation locations, holidays, and seasons of the year, and added them to the corresponding shared album with a click of a button. Once we had our pool of photos narrowed down, we needed to select eight per season that would actually fit in the frames. As we had quite the mix of squares, landscape and portrait frames, it was so helpful to have it listed out on a photo, in the shared album. Once we made the final picks, I used Amazon and Shutterfly to have them printed and shipped to our door. When they arrived, I placed them in the frames and our seasonal gallery wall was complete.
The Reveal
This relatively simple and affordable DIY project only took me about a day to complete. It ended up being such a wonderful addition to our foyer. I like to think that our seasonal gallery wall makes for a uniquely warm entrance to our home & keeps our guests excited to explore the new photograph selection each time they enter our home.
