gallery walls, how i love thee. well, i love art, so gallery walls are just the natural course of action for me. evey’s room has been a very slow work in progress, but i finally hung a few things on the wall so things aren’t looking quite so desolate. if you’ve seen my gallery wall tutorial, then you know my feeling about margins. i like there to be consistent spacing all the way around. sometimes that can pose a challenge or two when when trying to add variety without redundancies [the same size frames lining up exactly].
take this photo, for instance. there is a big gap between two frames at the top. the beauty of odd spaces like these is that you can fill them with unconventional things. they don’t have to be framed art per se, but art in their own right. letters & number of significance, photo booth photo stripes held up with a push pin, seriously, anything! in this case i thought i would go the practical route and create a hair clip holder to hang in the void.
1. all you need is:
- a pair of scissors
- low temp glue gun
- ribbon (i used 5/8″, but you can go with whatever you like or have on hand)
- a lighter (for finishing the edge of the ribbon, in a pinch i’ve use the flame on my gas stove!)
- a nail (not pictured, he was running late this morning…)
2. cut two pieces of ribbon (one double the width of your desired finished bow width and one 2″ short than that.
fold ends together and glue.
cut one piece of ribbon the desired length of your finished holder + 2″.
3. melt the end of your ribbon to give it a nice smooth edge and keep it from fraying.
4. approximately 1/2″ from the top of the finished ribbon edge, peirce the nail through the middle of the ribbon.
5. push nail all the way through and set aside.
6. layer the two bow pieces by centering the smaller bow over the larger bow and secure the two pieces of ribbon together with hot glue.
7. center the “nail ribbon” [nail point up] on top of the bow and leaving enough slack to wrap around the back of the bow.
secure the ribbon to the bow with hot glue.
8. flip the bow over and fold the “nail ribbon” to the backside of the bow.
secure with hot glue.
9. how drop it like it’s hot forged, i mean, hammer the nail into the way [in the spot you want to hang it].
tip: i left my ribbon a little longer than i wanted so i could match it up with the frame next to it and cut it exactly to the correct length.
trim, if needed, and finish the bottom of the ribbon with some melty heat.
[pause now and make some more hair clips because daughter does not like to wear them all day and has subsequently lost almost all of the cute ones you have made her...]
10. hang your clips on your new clip holder! [& hope they don't get lost any time soon.]
if you follow me on instagram then you saw the other “fill-in-the-blank” project i did [an "i love you" bunting out of paper.] here’s a shot of the gallery “corner” as it stands currently.
i go back and forth between painting the frames all white, leaving them all playful and crazy, or just painting a few of her old red frames white or black to break up that central mass…what’s your vote?
