Travel Themed Gallery Wall

Happy Thursday, ya’ll! I hope you’re having a great day! I got to go out earlier and meet with my hubby on his lunch break and had some delicious Thai food. Mmmmmm. So good. I always get Tofu Pad Thai, 1-2 stars depending on the location (I’m a wuss, I know) and it’s always fantastic.  I know I should branch out, but I’m worried about not liking something else! Any of you out there have good recommendations for what to get at a Thai restaurant? I need help! Thai dilemmas aside, let’s move on to my post for the day – my new travel themed gallery wall! I’m in love.

Ever since completing my map/quote project I knew that it needed to be featured in a gallery wall. My husband and I love to travel and all things associated with traveling. We both even love the airport, as weird as that may sound! Between the two of us, we’ve been to Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Argentina, Chile, Italy, Mexico, Uruguay, Canada, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. As you can tell, we’ve got the travel bug for sure! We hope to make a trip down to Peru to see Machu Picchu next October. So excited!

So considering we love travel so much, I thought that a blank wall in our home would be a perfect place to set up homage in the form of a gallery wall! I included a couple of crafts I have made, as well as some store bough frames and pieces. Let’s check out a before picture. If you took the Sooter Cottage Tour, you might recognize this sad looking wall:

I had haphazardly put up a few picture frames after we had moved in but that was about it. Boooo-oooo-ooo-rrrinngg. So this morning I decided to get creative and throw together items I had made, already had, and or had recently bought that fit the travel theme I was going for. I then just started putting piece by piece up on the wall, starting with my framed map quote and ending with my chalkboard banner. If you are unsure of where to start or are worried about things looking just right, a common technique is to trace each frame onto a piece of brown craft paper and then tape them up on the walls and move them around until you have the right configuration. I was too lazy to do this, so I just started with my biggest piece and moved down the line to the smaller pieces, fitting them in where they looked good. Here is the end result!

I’m in LOVE, I’m in love, and I don’t care who knows it! (Name that movie. It’s my most quoted movie, ever.) It really just came together piece by piece and I can’t get over how much more awesome the space is now. Let’s take a look at a breakdown of the pieces I used in this lovely masterpiece.

1.) I had these little silver mirrored birds that my sister got me for my birthday several years ago. I have a whole flock of them that used to be on the wall in our old apartment, but I snagged two from the set and put them up for shiny interest! The green ampersand was made by taking a plain wooden craft letter and gluing on bits of faux greenery!

2.) These adorable ‘you’ and ‘me’ arrows came from Michael’s and were like 49 cents each (score!) I gave ’em a fresh coat of spray paint and actually hung them on the wall with double sided tape! I felt like the arrows and the you and me wording for me and hubby fit into the travel theme quite nicely 🙂

3.) If you can believe it, this beautiful print is actually a birthday card from Trader Joe’s! They have tons of great and unique cards that are totally frameable, so I always peruse their greeting card section when I’m there!

4.) This cutie came from Michael’s as well and was only a buck! The absolute lowest price I’ve ever seen for pretty good looking antique style keys.

5.) Yes, this also came from Michael’s. I might have went on a *small* shopping spree for craft supplies the other day. But the great thing about this piece is that it was in the clearance section for over 50% off and the beautiful print of those to-die-for doors was already in the frame!

6.) I wanted to add a bit more red to my gallery wall to make it pop so I clipped a sweet red fabric rosette that I had made months earlier onto the edge of a frame!

7.) Printed out my Life is Sweeter printable and popped it in a cheapie Target frame. It doesn’t *perfectly* fit the travel theme, but I couldn’t resist. And there’s always this quote about books and travel: “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”

8.) All the postcards in the white frames are actually from our wedding! Instead of a traditional guest book we had friends and family write messages on the backs of postcards and put them in a mailbox. These ones are very precious and though you can’t see it, they have messages of love and well-wishes on the back! I love that we can use these in our home decor. They are so special to us!

I don’t think I’m quite finished yet. There are a few more things I want to add and I think I might want to paint some of those white frames so they pop out more. But I’m SO so happy with the result and it is now a great focus piece in our home! A couple more glamour shots are required, I think 😉

(BTW, that weird brown thing up in the corner is our broken doorbell sound box thingy. Wah wah.)

What do you think? Are you as in love with my travel themed gallery wall as I am?? What are some other good themes for a gallery wall?