Making it Work...

No, this isn't a fashion post, but all of you Tim Gunn fans will surely appreciate the reference! Anyhow, I've mentioned a couple of times that the decorating budget for our new home is pretty tight. As a result, I am reusing and repurposing as many furniture and  decor items as I can from our previous home. It's not often that I walk into a client's home and they want me to start a room completely from scratch. There is usually the need to reuse some item(s) from the space and make them work in the new design plan. That is exactly what I'm doing in my new house!

You might recognize the picture below as the family room from my previous house.

I really loved the mirrors and botanical prints that hung on our sofa wall. We don't have a "sofa wall" in our new home, but I did find the perfect place to reuse these items in my new home...with a few small changes.

The large blank wall in the hallway to our bedroom was the perfect spot to reuse the mirrors and framed botanical prints.

I decided to use six botanicals instead of the ten I had on my sofa wall. I also decided to switch out the frames for some larger ones. I already had 3 of the frames from Hobby Lobby. I went and picked up 3 more when they were 50% off. Each frame cost me less than $10. I also matted the prints with mattes I picked up for $2 each.

As I've mentioned before, I have incorporated some coral into my new family room. Since this hallway is adjacent to the family room, I added a few brighter hued botanical prints into the gallery.

The prints themselves are actually book pages from this book which I purchased for about $15.

Jenny introduced me to this book and it has been such a great resource for me. I have used it for inexpensive art, not just in my own home, but in many client projects as well. The botanicals are quite beautiful up close.

I am really happy with how the wall turned out, and my hubby is really happy that I filled an entire wall in our home using things we mostly already had!

Staircase Gallery Wall

Back in December, I did a post featuring the Christmas decor in my home. In that post, I shared a picture of my stair rail garlands. In the background of that picture you can catch a glimpse of the gallery wall going up my stairs. I had a couple people email me and ask me to post more pictures of it. Although, I had every intention of doing so, it kind of slipped my mind. Until last week, one of my cute readers, asked me about it again. I finally snapped some pictures of it to share with you.

You can't tell from these pictures, but the wall actually extends up about another 10 feet. I am excited to continue to add to the gallery and ultimately have it extend all the way to the ceiling!

I looked a lot of pictures of gallery walls before putting mine together. I knew I didn't want all my frames to match, but I did want a cohesive look. So, with the exception of the painted frames, I kept the finish of all the frames the same, a gilded metallic. The frames were gathered over time from Pottery Barn, Home Goods and Hobby Lobby. The letters are also from Hobby Lobby. I changed the original finish on them with a couple of coats of spray paint. As far as the process of planning the layout of the wall, I just did what seemed most practical. Gallery walls can be tricky, especially when you are creating one that will angle up a stairway wall. I put this gallery wall together last August (before I started this blog). I think I snapped a couple of pictures of the process, so I want to dig them out of my digital files and share them with you when I explain how I put the gallery wall up. I love having this spot in my home to display pictures that have been taken over time. I also want to add some other small trinkets and art prints to it.

Are you a fan of gallery walls? Do you prefer to have all the frames match or do you like the idea of having the frames look like they were collected over time?