style session: freshen your walls

t’s that tricky time of year where we’re still recovering from holiday spending and starting to anticipate spring. Chilly days and tight pursestrings can leave you feeling stuck in the mud when it comes to design inspiration. But Paige and I have solved that problem for you in this month’s Tracery Style Session!

We’re going to show you how to freshen your walls without breaking the bank. All you need is a hammer, some nails and a little imagination.

I hopped over to Paige’s beach cottage so we could play around with her Family Room gallery wall. As you can see, she has a lovely collection of vintage frames and a few key pieces of art. Her colors are a monochromatic blend of chocolates with brushed golds and significant pops of green.

THE TWO LOOKS…

We perked up color and created two slightly different gallery wall looks; one inspired by GREEN and the other inspired by ORANGE. For our green grouping, we decided to play off of a modern bird painting that’s generous in both size and color. It’s an affordable $93 at Tracery.

Our GREEN-inspired version.

Paige playfully hung the bird painting inside an existing green frame she had. You can see we also added some eclectic items like Tracery’s zinc letters to mix things up.

After we established the bird painting as our anchor piece, we went shopping around Paige’s house and borrowed art from different rooms. I love how she incorporated some of her daughter’s abstract art. Here is another beautiful piece painted by Paige’s mother, who is a talented artist.

Sentimental pieces always have the most meaning, don’t they?

TIPS ON FRESHENING YOUR WALLS:

Involve a creative friend. When it coms to design, many times two heads are better than one. Paige and I experimented and bounced ideas off each other when we tweaked her grouping. Working with a partner takes a little pressure off and actually inspires more courage in making changes. Plus it’s FUN!
Don’t be afraid. Play with your groupings and don’t be afraid if you hang something and it doesn’t work. Take it down and try something different. Sometimes it can be intimidating to start with a blank wall, or one that is already set. If you’re nervous about changing, then take a photo before you begin. You can always put it back the way you had it.
Throw perfection out the window. One of the charming aspects of a gallery wall is that it looks spontaneous and unfixed, so it’s a little more forgiving when you hang a few pieces without measuring down to the quarter inch.
Ditch formal framing. If you have a picture or smaller item you’d like to display, but can’t afford to have it framed right now, just casually hang it inside another bigger frame. Older frames are easy to come by and add so much charm. This technique will add character to your grouping.
Have fun. If you can make it more light hearted and fun, then your creative juices will flow much easier…this concept coordinates nicely with idea number 1.

Here is our ORANGE-inspired version.

We based this grouping off another Tracery mod bird painting, this time it was orange. We deleted the green pillows on Paige’s sofa and went with pillows in Schumacher’s Chiang Mai Dragon to play up the orange tones. Notice we changed the flowers to from simple greens to pale pink tulips on her coffee table. It’s the little things ; )

When working with the orange bird painting, we didn’t use any kind of frame, which brought a more modern vibe to the grouping. Paige had two smaller orange paintings, so we hung them close together to utilize that vertical negative space.

OTHER STYLE TIPS…

1. Show your collections in unexpected places. Paige collects small vintage boxes and gracefully displays them on her rustic coffee table. It’s personal AND pretty, my favorite combination.

2. Use your yard as a resource for centerpieces. We went outside to look around for some greenery to put on the coffee table but it was slim pickins due to our cold weather. We resorted to Palmettos, which grow like weeds here. Unfortunately, Palmettos tend to be so big and pointy that they take up too large of a space in a small setting. So we just snipped the Palmettos down to a proportionate size.

Ta-Da!

We had a lot of fun with this Style Session! Thanks to Paige for volunteering her lovely abode. If you see anything you like (including Paige’s mother’s art!) pick up the phone and call Tracery. They’ll be happy to assist!

On another note, Paige’s pooch Lucy was so busy watching all the details in our session that she had to take a long afternoon nap to recoup. It’s a hard life ; )

*No animals were harmed in the making of this post*

style session: freshen your walls

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