Inexpensive Gallery Wall

We all know that gallery walls are quite popular these days.  In fact I have several in my own home.  I mentioned on Monday that I was looking for way to fill up this wall without spending a lot.  I love using black and white family photos, but we have a wall full of them on the opposite wall in the living room.  I love my family more than anything, but I didn't want guests to be bombarded with pictures everywhere.  I ended up coming up with a few DIY ideas to fill the space and keep it interesting.  

A while back I won some pretty amazing paint markers from a giveaway over at Brittany Makes.  I've been trying to come up with a project to use them on and decided to try a little abstract art in gold.  It took me about 5 seconds to finish it and I really like the graphic punch.  You don't have to have anything special to make this art, you can just use good old paint and a paintbrush like I did for these.  For the gold Ampersand I used my Silhouette machine and some gold foil.  If you have a silhouette machine I highly recommend the gold foil.  It gives you a shiny finish like the popular gold foil prints.  It's hard to capture the way it shines in a picture but in real life it's pretty reflective.  Even if you don't have a silhouette, the ampersand print would be easy to create with a stencil or you could just print it out in a fun color.  

I've seen a lot of cute little signs with family rules posted on them and thought it would be a fun addition to the gallery wall.  I'm no graphic designer so it's pretty simple and straightforward but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Here's the printable if you want one of your own.  You can also download it here.

 I stole the silhouette from our stairway gallery wall.  It's a silhouette of my husband from when he was a kid.  The bottom print is actually just a picture from an old book my mom bought me from Goodwill.

The mirror was a thrift store find and the antlers were from Target.  I grabbed them after Christmas when they went on clearance.  Up in the top left corner I framed an agate slice that I had gotten on clearance a while back.  I stuck it in a shadow box and held it in place with a dab of hot glue.

I did throw in one family picture at the top just for something different and more personal.  I'm sure it will continue to grow and change as time goes by which is part of the fun of having a gallery wall.