Hi, it’s me, your travel blogger friend who left her glamorous, frivolous life in Spain to settle back into the typical patterns of everyday American society for the past 10 months. (Thanks, COVID.) While our next adventures seem to be creeping closer, little by little, I’ve had some time to work on other projects that I’ve enjoyed. And one of them was decorating my very own office!
When our roommates moved out at the end of January, Matt and I finally got to move into our own home offices. I’ve never had an office before! I spent way too long planning out how I wanted it to look, browsing Etsy and Facebook Marketplace for things that would make it feel cozy and also remind me of my former life. And thus, I decided on a travel-themed Gallery Wall.
I thought it would be fun to share the process with everyone, in case you’re interested in trying something similar! (And if you’re looking for some inspiration for your wall, check out these travel quotes.)
Art Curation
I’ve never attempted something like this before, so I did quite a lot of research first on how to create a good gallery wall. One of the things I consistently read: You shouldn’t just go out and buy a bunch of art for the sake of the gallery. Some online sites even sell pre-made gallery art sets. But the best gallery walls have a lot of character specific to the person who designs them. Each piece tells a story.
Luckily, I already had a lot of travel-themed posters, maps, and art in other mediums that had been sitting in a box in the closet since I got home from Spain. I did search Etsy for other travel prints that felt special to me to make my gallery a little more well-rounded. Plus, it’s important to have a good variety of size, as well as vertical or horizontal orientation. That gives it more visual interest. But apart from that, the majority of my art was already mine — things I’d been collecting for years.
Here are a few of those pieces and their stories:
London/Notting Hill Poster
When I moved into my apartment in Spain, there was a single, empty poster frame hanging above my bed. As I gradually furnished my bedroom, I kept an eye out for something I could put in it — something that would help tie the room together and make it feel like home. I found this poster of Notting Hill in London (another place that’s very special to me), and it fit the poster frame almost perfectly. I knew it had to be part of my gallery wall!
German Map of Spain
I came across this old map of Spain at a market in Berlin when I visited in 2019. It’s from 1906, and it only cost €8! I had to buy it. The hardest part was trying to protect it from the rain and ensure it didn’t get all bent up in my backpack I was carrying, because it’s really fragile.
Homemade “Wanderlust” Canvas
In 2017 when my Italian sister Gaia was with us for Christmas, she made me this as a gift. We both love to travel, and that’s something that really connects us. This came to Spain with me, and I love it!
Madrid Arrow Sign
I bought a few of these signs at the Rastro market in Madrid for my family and for Matt. But I also bought myself one, because unfortunately I figured there would eventually come a day when I was away from Madrid. (Though I didn’t know it would be so soon. ☹)
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A few of my art pieces are postcards from places I’ve been, and some were downloaded from Etsy. For those, it was as easy as taking the file to FedEx and having them print it for me on nicer, sturdier paper. It was cheap, too!
And three of my art pieces aren’t made of paper, but I knew I wanted them to be part of the gallery wall as well because they fit the theme. Plus, it gives the whole thing more visual interest/variety.
Framing
Most gallery walls have art in frames. As my gallery ended up with 18 pieces of art — 15 of which needed frames — that’s a lot of frames to buy!
A nice frame at Target will set you back around $13… and that’s for a relatively small one! It can really add up quickly. So I bought all of my frames (except one) at the thrift stores near me. I found most of them at Savers and Goodwill. Most of the small/medium frames were less than $3. Some of the larger ones were around $4-$8, but I didn’t need too many of those. In total, I probably spent about $50 on frames.
You can decide whether you want to have all your frames the same color or colors, or whether you want to mix it up. I decided I wanted a more eclectic mix, so I have frames of almost every color and style.
Before going to the thrift store, it helps if you have a general idea of how large you need your frames to be. I took measurements of all of my art pieces, so I knew I needed two 11×14 frames, three 5×7 frames, etc.
For some of the pieces that have more unique sizes, I measured them with the goal of finding frames that matched their proportions. The cheap 20×28″ poster frame I got from Joann was a decent fit for my 18×25″ poster of London, with a 2-3 inch border around the sides. I bought some large pieces of white cardstock/poster board to use as a background for several of my pieces. I trimmed it to the right size for the frame, taped my art to it, and then framed the whole thing — which now has a clean, even white border.
At the thrift store, a lot of the larger frames are in the “wall art” section rather than with picture frames. As these are meant to be purchased and hung as-is, it’s hard to know how big they are because they don’t list their frame size. So, I recommend bringing a tape measure with you! If I saw a somewhat-promising frame, I would whip out the tape measure and find out whether it was good fit for one of my pieces. The people at the store might have thought I was weird, but it all worked out in the end for me. 🙂
It took me about three or four trips to gather all the frames I needed, and it took varying levels of work in order to “open” the frames and replace the art. I don’t recommend doing this all in one night because it can be frustrating. Definitely be sure you have some tools on hand (needle-nose pliers were the real MVP) to help remove any metal that holds the back of the frame together.
Making a Template
It might be very tempting to skip this step. Because it’s also a lot of work, and it’s time consuming. BUT, I attribute this step to the overall success of my gallery wall’s design.
Get a roll of white paper — or you can use newspaper. Whatever kind of paper that is big enough for your largest pieces of art is fine. But, once all your art is framed, lay it over your big pieces of paper, trace it, and cut it out. Then, label it with something that will help you know what piece of art it is. “Denali Moose,” for example. After you’ve done it for all your frames, you should have a bunch of pieces of paper that are the same size as your frames.
Now, you can use painter’s tape to tape your these template pieces on the wall and play around with your layout. I started by measuring to find the midpoint of my wall. Then, I placed a piece of painter’s tape vertically to mark it. I started by taping my largest template piece on one side of it. Then, I kept building with additional template pieces around it, trying to keep it even on both sides.
Making a template on the actual wall is so much easier than using the real frames on the floor and trying to translate that to the wall. You don’t have to worry about making a mistake when it comes to hanging, either, because the templates are also useful in that regard!
Hanging the Art
While you could do this with nails, many of the frames I used didn’t have sawtooth hangers or any hangers whatsoever. Plus, I didn’t want to put nearly 20 holes in the wall. Especially because I still wasn’t sure how/if this was going to turn out. Instead, I bought a ton of large Command Strips from Target (probably about $40 total, but I didn’t use all of them on this project).
Bonus: the pack of command strips I bought came with a mini level, which was way easier than trying to use the heavy 3-foot level we have in our basement. I also used this level to help me when I was putting up my template pieces to make sure they were relatively straight.
So, now it’s time to hang your art! Instead of taking the template pieces down, leave them up and replace only one piece at a time with your real art. Again, I started with my biggest piece. When I took down that template piece, it was obvious to me where my poster needed to go. I put the command strips on the back of the frame and removed the sticky backing. And put the poster up where the template piece had been, using my mini level.
And I just did this one by one until all the frames were up and all the paper templates were on the ground. (Even though I was still missing a few pieces of art, I went ahead and put all the frames up.)
I would step back every once in a while to see how it was looking. I think I only needed to make one adjustment based on one of the pieces looking a little crooked, but the level helped and the template obviously did, too! Everything went up without a hitch.
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In the end, I’m really happy with how it turned out! While stumbling into my office each morning with my coffee and sitting down for work isn’t as exciting as my two years in Spain… it sure beats when I was in lockdown in my apartment bedroom during the first few months of the pandemic last spring. Turns out, sitting on your bed with a small lap desk from IKEA isn’t the most comfortable workspace… but I try to leave that in the past 😉
Have you ever tried something like a gallery wall? Or, how do you bring travel into your living spaces? Let me know in the comments!
–Cathy
Originally Published on April 24, 2021.
This is perfection!