Mini Gallery Walls - Poster Store

You all know the past year has been one big home project. From nearly gutting our 1979 colonial to completely redoing the landscaping, we've had our hands full with big projects. 1.5 years later the bigger projects are winding down and I'm starting to focus on the details. I'm slowly hanging art in our home, trying to find that balance between thoughtfully curated pieces and that thing we like to call a budget. I had big ideas for a stairway gallery wall and some of the other empty white walls in my home. For the stairs, I envisioned this eclectic but flowing combination of art, making its way up the stairs in a series of multi-sized black and light wood frames. I started by using public domain art which was really hit or miss in some spaces but somewhere in the middle of this process, Poster Store reached out to me about a collaboration project and I thanked the art gods for sending them why way. I started browsing the galleries of posters and prints and was pleasantly surprised by the selection of themes and categories with a new poster collection released every Tuesday. 

I instantly loved the style of posters and settled into the hard part - picking art. They had it all from quotes to landscapes, watercolor to caligraphy. Poster Store has a unique selection to help create a gallery wall tailor-made for your home. If you browse through the galleries, you will quickly notice a Scandinavian design that is both beautiful and affordable (and you guys know how I feel about Scandi design and updating my home in a way that is affordable). All the posters are printed on sustainably produced high-quality paper and it felt like Christmas morning as I opened up all the boxes of frames and envelopes of prints.

To start off my larger stairway gallery wall, I taped up different-sized cutouts of wrapping paper up the stairs to get an idea for a layout. I hemmed and I hawed and decided to move onto the art. I printed color 8x11 mock-ups of the prints I had chosen and pasted them all over the wall to see how the colors would look. Then, I lined up the art in their frames in a mockup big gallery wall way along the stairway with other prints I had picked and this is where the story turns. It just didn't feel right. 

The art was beautiful and the frames looked great, but it just didn't match the rest of our home or my style. Big gallery walls just felt too messy in my home and I'm still figuring out how to go about the stairs (they are still naked). The issue was now I had these homeless beautiful prints begging to be hung around my home.  It was time to pivot and I quickly decided on "mini gallery walls" in two other rooms. 

I started putting these pieces together in a different way and let me start by saying that these mini-collections are so much more my style. It feels more cohesive, much less busy, and adds art to my home in a much more organized way that truly feels like me. 

Another awesome thing about my newly thought out "mini gallery walls" that I quickly discovered is that they make the perfect gift. I love my family and friends but gifting them a 10 piece gallery wall is out of the budget. But 2 to 3 pieces framed and thoughtfully put together? Yep, this I can do. With Christmas coming up and Black Friday around the corner, I was excited to see these prints and frames in my home in a way that worked for me before I went on another shopping spree for family and friends and fine, myself. One more perk? Asking your husband to hang a few smaller sets of art is much easier than spending a day on a big gallery wall. 

The fact that Poster Store offers frames (sized to all of their prints) made this process so much more seamless as it was truly a one-stop-shop. I stuck to frames in light wood tones and black metal knowing this would look best in our home. I opened the frames and at first glance, was disappointed to see they had the acrylic "glass" instead of traditional glass. The story changes again as the second I started handling them and getting them on the walls I was in love with them. They are so much lighter than my glass frames and did not have that waxy sheen that my inexpensive IKEA acrylic frames had. You don't need heavy-duty anchors to hold up the frames and they are much kinder and had that more "minimalistic" look I craved on my walls. 

When I got to the last frame, I noticed a corner was cracked which gave me the perfect opportunity to see how the company's customer service really was. I sent out a quick email with a few photos and a few days later, a new frame was on its way to replace the broken frame. All I can say is quality light-weight frames that are easy to hang, coming from a company with fast and friendly customer service - check, check, check. 

Long story short, big stairway gallery walls aren't for me but wow do I love these prints in every other nook and cranny of my home in these little mini-galleries. The watercolors found their way into my dressing nook and fit perfectly with the theme (the print on the left is a gorgeous watercolor of a woman taking off her sweater). The landscapes are shelved in my half bath and they are so fun and airy in this small space.

I loved these prints and the quality so much that my shopping cart is once again filling with designs for different parts of the house (maybe gallery wall take 2?) With Black Friday coming up this week, this is the perfect time to browse their print and frame collection to curate the perfect gift for friends and family.  The Poster Store is also offering a 55% discount to readers using code KATIE//55. This discount code is in effect from Nov 26th until Nov 29th and does exclude the "selection" collection. 

Happy shopping and please let me know what prints and poster make their way into your home.