Our Kodiak Wall

This project has been a long time coming!  I've been planning it and collecting pieces for a while, and it's finally come to fruition after painstakingly gathering everything I wanted to use.  Wahoo!

I've been visualizing it, picking accessories and photos out, having Alaska themed art professionally framed, and anticipating seeing the final project complete since long before we even left Kodiak.

I was a little intimidated by the idea of a gallery wall.  It seemed like it would be difficult to get a handle on how to make what was in my head look straight and appropriately spaced on the wall. 

To the internet!

I found a few tutorials and jumped right on in.  God bless the internet. How did we even figure shit out easily before?  It's exhausting just thinking about how much more effort doing stuff inevitably was before we all had google to tell us crap.  Anyway...

The easiest way I found to tackle a gallery wall is to lay out the pictures and pieces the way you'd like them to be arranged on a large sheet of butcher paper.  Outline each frame and put  a dot where you want to hang each frame.

Of course, I didn't have any butcher paper, so I used what I had.  Which was newspaper.  Taped together in the approximate size of the wall I planned to use.  Not pretty, but it worked just fine.

I replaced all of the black and white photos with new Alaska pictures we took over the three years we lived there.

I messed around with the layout until I found one I liked, and then I outlined all of the pictures with a black sharpie and marked the spot where each one was to be hung.

Next, I taped the giant mess of newspaper to the wall, and hammered a nail or hanger into the spots I marked for each picture.

As you can see, I started with paper I had, but quickly realized I didn't have enough and switched to newspaper.

Once I hammered a nail into each dot, I carefully ripped the template off the wall and started hanging.  Truth be told, I had to readjust a few of the pictures, but overall everything looked good.

Not too bad for my first attempt!

I had to specifically request he include Kodiak!

I collected art from local Kodiak artists while we lived there, but the bulk of the wall is my own photography. 

One of my favorites is the reclaimed wood cut out of the state of Alaska. 

I found an artist on Etsy and thought it would be a perfect addition to the wall.

Too damn cute!

The colorful, rectangular piece on the top right is a picture by a local Kodiak artist of an old, historical cannery on Moser Bay.  The hubby got it for me for one of our Christmases in Alaska.  Another one of my favorites.

I've got an Alutiiq mask, a mini Alutiiq kayak paddle, the Crabfest poster from our first Crabfest, and all sorts of Alaskan photography.

I love it for my very first attempt!  Let's hear it for my Kodiak wall!

Ta-ta for now.