Wall Art and Recent Purchases

When we first moved in we splurged and bought a bunch of art pieces in order to create a gallery wall. There are pieces hanging up that I really love, and there are pieces that I consider to be “space savers.” Slowly we’ve been adding and updating the paintings and photos hanging there.

Finding art for your walls is not small feat! You have to love it, your spouse/partner/roommate has to love it, and it has to be within your budget. I love Picasso and van Gogh. My budget is one that cannot allow for an original painting 😂 but, Danny doesn’t like the idea of hanging poster replicas on the walls 🙄. So … we compromise; I get to hang small 5 x 7 poster replicas of famous pieces I like, and the bigger pieces can be original art that fits comfortably in our budget.

Putting together a gallery wall can take months/years. Ikea can help speed up the process, they have affordable frames as well as some pretty awesome prints. I recommend figuring out your frame pallet first. Danny and I thought we were going to go all white with our frames, but then we found some awesome vintage paintings that needed to stay in their original frames in order to have the same feel. Now we take a mix and match approach, a good chunk of our frames are white, but some are wood, gold, and there’s even a blue frame and an avocado colored frame thrown up there.

TIP: A trick I learned from Martha Stewart while putting up my plate wall in my kitchen was to grab some butcher paper, cut our all the sizes of the things that will be going up on the wall, and then using those cut outs to find the proper place on your wall. Since it’s paper you can just add the nail right through it and then tear the paper off the wall. There’s no guessing, it’s easy, and you can see the end result before you start punching your wall full of holes. Becky Owens gave some very helpful advice about how high to hang up art and how to hang it securely. I highly recommend clicking on that link and reading what she has to say!

Below are some of the recent art purchases we’ve made (and so dearly love):

in-chorus-blog — I wasn’t able to join in on the Women’s March last month, so I was really grateful that Justina Blakeney offered to make prints of her beautiful art piece and donate 100% of the proceeds to the Downtown Women’s Center in LA. I felt like I could contribute to something, as well as get such a beautiful piece from the historical event.

willian — Willian Santiago is a Brazilian graphic designer/illustrator. He did a series of prints where he shared his interpretation of the black women of Souther Brazil. Although I am Argentine, and usually fight against all things Brazil, these pieces are too beautiful and unique to fight against. I will proudly hang this Brazilian artists’ portraits of these beautiful Brazilian women on my walls.

il_fullxfull-241394596 — Living in Southern California you are around so many fantastic and creative people, and about 4 times a year you can find craft fairs to go to. These fairs are wonderful places to find art at affordable prices. We found small adventure at the Renegade Craft Fair and we can’t recommend them highly enough. Their prints are beautiful for living rooms, bedrooms and even baby rooms! They’re a really good size for the price.

Humans and Hybrids

Mythical Beasts

We’ve actually bought a couple of pieces from Banquet. Their pieces are always interesting, unique, and at a spectacular price. We purchased their Ship Print (currently 30%) when we first put up our gallery wall and have since then made two more purchases (👆🏼the two above. I mean, how good are those!? Everyone should own them)

I hope you were able to discover at least one new artist here today, and I wish you not-too-empty wallets 😉 and cluttered walls 😍