Gallery Wall Version 28.0 (in which I halfheartedly attempt to decorate like an adult while simultaneously clinging on to my childhood)

February 11, 2013 by Anne 8 Comments

Today I’ve decided to torture you with a fun game of “spot the difference between these two pictures!” Try to contain your excitement and dig deep for those long unused Highlights Magazine skills that you once had.

The above picture is our dining room gallery wall shortly after we moved in. My strategy with these things is basically to gather up anything that is sort of flat and figure out how to attach it to the wall. Here’s the gallery wall in it’s current state:

It can definitely use some more work, but these things take time. And talent, for which I have only a tiny bit. So I keep tweaking. I consider this apartment to be a “testing grounds” of sorts for decorating so that once we get a house I can immediately have flawlessly decorated spaces that look like adults live there. Lofty/unattainable goal? You betcha. But I try.

My latest tweak was inspired by this photo, found on Pinterest (with a broken link, hate that!):

Nice, huh? I especially liked the large emerald green frame that was distressed a little (or just really dirty). And so, in an attempt to eradicate some of the lime green plaguing my life (not all of it–I’m just learning I like it in smaller doses), I slapped a wee bit of Valspar’s Vegas Green on it.

The laundry basket made for an excellent worktable.

I then basically dry-brushed it with some dark brown craft paint I had on hand to give it more of a distressed feel. I wish I’d had black, like the inspiration picture shows, but I’m fine with how this turned out.

It’s now more dirty looking, and I like it that way. Adult decorating is very refined in an opposite sort of way, obviously, and new/clean-looking items are the stuff of amateurs.

Oh, and you should have spotted 6 or 7 differences, depending on how you count them (this isn’t an exact science, people). I got a sweet piece o’ artwork from the Bibles for Mexico Thrift Store for a quarter and liked the colors. The plastic frame with fake wood grain? Sure, why not. I also painted over some of the light blue and added some burlap and a doily into a frame (I have doilies everywhere; why not here?). And string art. And I moved some other things around.

Perhaps next time I’ll have some preachy Goofus and Gallant comics for you, so please do come back.

Also, please tell me that someone else read Highlights as much as I did. My favorite feature hands-down was the puzzle where you had to find the hidden objects. I became a pro and now credit all of my success as a publishing professional to that exercise.

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