Gallery Wall

I have had this picture pinned forever.  I think it was one of my very first pins.

(VIA ~ Just Be Blogged)

And, Jennifer from Hope Studios recreated it in her space.

(VIA ~ Hope Studios)

I also pinned this wall gallery.

(VIA ~ Love Charla Anne)

As you can see, I like the uniform look of the picture layouts.  

Square pictures.  Equal spacing.

And I finally found some time to redo the wall in our basement.  

When we finished our basement (5 years ago), I quickly found 6 of my favorite pictures, had them printed in black and white and tossed them into some UBER CHEAP Walmart frames 

that I spray painted black.

Here is what I ended up with:

Blah, boring and none of Smiley!

Well, things have changed :) 

I started with a plan.  A plan for 9 new pictures.  

I knew I wanted them to be 12x12's and I didn't want big clunky frames (simple, almost frameless).  

I also didn't want to spend the money to make the into canvas' for two reasons.  One, the $$ and two, 

I like to change things up and wanted to be able to swap out pictures without having to create yet another canvas.

I began frame shopping and ended up finding some at Michaels that I liked.  (This one is not the exact one I purchased, but very similar!)  Luckily I found them during the Christmas shopping season and besides them being on sale , they also had additional 25% off coupons!  Oh yeah...... :)

Anyway, with Hubby's help (more like I assisted the Hubs) we measured and leveled 9 frames.  Put the pictures in them and hung them up.  

~ Voila ~ 

So much better!  

BUT...

I loved it so much, and the wall is so big, and there were so many more pictures I wanted to use, that we ended up purchasing and hanging 9 MORE frames.

That's right 18 pictures in all.

AND I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!

Details:

Frames ~ Michaels (similar to these)

Photos ~ 12x12 printed at Costco

** The only thing I don't like is that Costco only prints 12x12 prints in a glossy finish.  So, there is a bit a glare.  In the future, I may look for a printer that prints 12x12's reasonably in a matte finish.

Get your Craft on

Someday Crafts

The Basement

Finally, a weekend at home.

Relaxing

Catching up on housework

Dinner out as a family

Listening to the rain

What was that last one you ask?

Rain? Where I live? I know I was just as excited as the next person. And secretly hoping the pond, mud hole, weedy pit behind our house would once again fill up with water. Not the case, but we did get rain.... and lots of it. The grass, newly planted trees and shrubs all sighed in relief.

Right after the Sassy and Action drifted into dream land, the tornado sirens started going off. Since we are usually "safety first" people, we woke them up and hunkered down in the basement. Thankfully, we did not have a tornado touch down at or around our place and we did not hear about much damage. We did however witness this beautiful sky, full of flashes of lightning once the imminent danger was past us.

WARNING: The pictures I have here do not come close to doing the sky justice!

beautiful and fierce ~ amazing