Gallery Wall How-To

by Pam Hartwell

My project started with a very tall wall (14’) in the room where people enter my home. My home is a 1906 farmhouse where I grew up, and then it was my mother’s home most of my adult life. In the early 1970s the old farmhouse got an addition and the front room was designed to fit a piece of furniture that my grandfather saved from a home he was working on. The piece was a 9’ tall dark mahogany, carved wood, marble topped, mirrored sideboard with heavy religions themes. 

 After my mom died, I needed to make the home my own and decided the heavy and very large piece was not my style and put it up for sale. It was clearly a statement piece and I wanted something with similar wow factor, but also more modern. I also knew I wanted a couch on that wall to look out at the wall of windows that it faces.

What a great spot for one of those gallery-style arrangements of art!

I love eclectic art and working at the ReStore allows me to constantly be building my collection. I also had some posters I had dumpster-dived years ago, some beautiful carvings made by my great grandfather, and art made by my mom. Variety of mediums is the key to a good gallery wall; I had paintings, yarn art, pencil drawings, ceramic pieces, flat and bulky wood and plaster carvings, and lots of different styles of frames.

​Here are the materials needed to complete this project:

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• Freshly painted wall (or at least one that is in good shape and clean)
• Art (variety of sizes, shapes, and
• materials works best)
• Level - at least 2’ long
• Newspaper and scissors​
• Reusable mounting putty

• Command strips
• Nails
• Hammer
• Blue tape
• Sharpies - big ones
• Ladder

​Getting Started
Prepare the wall and decide how much space you want to use. I measured out a 10’ by 10’ square (this left 2 full feet on either side and top and bottom in case the art needed to expand out) and used a level and some mounting putty to put up a blue tape line to show a level bottom and two level side lines. I knew my gallery was not going to be entirely contained in the blue tape lines, but I appreciated that I had level guides to work with. ​

Gather Your Art
 Pull all your art together and lay it out. Look at how it goes together and think about the pieces that you want to highlight; I chose 4 rectangle pieces for each or the corners to create a sense of order. At this point I curated out some pieces and sought new pieces for a nice balance of shapes, sizes, and a variety of mediums. Make sure each piece is clean and ready to hang with either a wire mount or command strips. Command strips are great for ease of hanging, but if your piece is rough or dirty, it will fall. I knew we would be sitting below these pieces, so I made sure the really heavy carvings were secure with nails in studs (I marked them with pencil lines and the help of a stud finder).  

Once you have decided what you want, make paper cutout copies of your art. Transfer the shape of the artwork to newspaper by tracing around the frame and then cut out the shape. I also decided to use fat sharpies to make basic drawings of each item on the newspaper so I would know what it was when I had it hanging on the wall. Plus it was fun!

Start hanging the newspaper on the wall using mounting putty. 

Use 1-2 pieces of putty near the top of the newspaper art and be careful not to rub the newspaper on the wall, especially if your wall is light colored. I decided I wanted 4 square or rectangle larger pieces to anchor my corners, so I started with those and worked my way towards the center. I decided to leave at least 4 inches in-between each piece to help with uniformity. I also decided a few pieces would go outside the blue tape. The great thing about the newspaper art is that I could move things easily.

Once you have all the paper shapes on the wall, another set of eyes is good. I had my daughter helping the entire process and my boyfriend chiming in with ideas. Once we had all the newspaper art hung we spent a day looking and adjusting.

​Hang the Art
Use the newspaper as your guide by figuring out where the nail needs to be on the art then mark it on the newspaper. It will often show through because newspaper is thin, or you can lift/fold the newspaper so you can mark the wall before you take the newspaper down.

Even if you think you know where everything is going, leave the newspaper up until you replace it with art. The newspaper continues to be your guide to see if you want more room for an item. It is MUCH easier to rearrange the gallery design when it’s newspaper rather than as art with holes in the wall. 

I hung the art from the outside in, but if I had it to do over, I would recommend hanging from the inside pieces first and move out as you can always expand your space on the outside edge, but not in the middle.

Take down the blue tape, use the level again to make sure each piece is good. Adjust as needed. I used the putty on some of the bottom corners of the art to give it good contact with the wall and help keep it level.

Hot tip! Give each piece enough room. Remember the actual art is 3-dimensional and it will look more crowded when it’s the real piece rather than just pieces of newspaper.

Final Step
Sit back and enjoy your Gallery Wall! 
I love this project because it utilized great pieces of art from the ReStore and really gives wow factor to our entry room. Perfect solution for a large wall!

Gallery Wall 2020, Pam Hartwell