Salon Gallery

I've been itching to make a salon gallery for a long time - and for a long time, I couldn't quite figure out where to put it. Finally, I settled on a big open wall in the dining room. I had seen a lot of tutorials online for how to make a salon gallery, but to be honest, I still wasn't sure how to go about it. 

Do I purchase all the frames first, then try to arrange them? Do I make a mock up, then buy the frames? White or black or some-other-color frames? Bah. Decisions, decisions. 

For a long time it kept me from doing anything - 8 months long time. Then, one day I was at Ikea to pick up a couple of other things and I had the sudden urge to just pick up a ton of their Ribba frames and at least give it a shot. After purchasing the frames, I cut out paper templates of each of the frames I had, then from there I hung them all up on the wall, starting with the large square you'll see in the photo below and working out. 

(Of course, I used white paper on a white wall to make sure the arrangement was super camouflaged. Then I used my crappy cell phone camera to make it even harder to see.)

After I had tweaked the arrangement once or twice, I had Mike help me put the nails in the wall for the frames. (His ability to use a level is invaluable - I'm more of a "very accurate eyeballer"- not okay for this project.) We just put the nails right through the paper and ripped the paper off once they were in. Super simple.

Then we just hung the frames and ta-da! It's done! I know it looks a bit dull and boring, with all the white and grey, but I plan on putting in lots of photos to bring in color. There was a wicked glare off all the shiny new frames, so I tried taking several different angles of the gallery. Yeah, it didn't help. But, I posted them anyway so my work wouldn't be in vain.

Even though it was. Ah, well.

I'll be back soon with more of the frames full of photos!