diy picture frame accent wall

When we bought our house I knew I wanted to paint at least one room in the house before we moved in (the house was a boring builder beige color throughout). I figured we would be spending the most time in our living room so I started there. I’m not sure where my love for gray came from, but this was the first time I used it. Gray is a bitch of a color to choose for paint. There are blue grays, purple grays, brown grays, green grays…sigh. I choose one color gray from the paint chips and bought a gallon. After the paint color went up it looked decidedly blue, but I didn’t feel like repainting so I went with it. See…blue. Oh well.

I found a large painting at World Market and decided to use the blues and greens as accent colors as well as yellow. I found the yellow pot in the dollar section at Target. The glass bottles I stole was gifted from our friend after the garage sale we had together. I picked up the flowers from World Market as well. She also was getting rid of selling a bunch of picture frames. 

Now at this time I had been spending a lot of time on Etsy, because I had not yet discovered Pinterest or it wasn’t really a big deal yet. I found multiple listings for empty colored picture frames for a gallery wall in a variety of coordinating colors, but at a price point that I really wasn’t sold on. So when I saw all of the picture frames I decided to snag a few and make my own gallery/accent wall.

The rest is pretty simple. I took out all the glass and backs because I planned on leaving them empty.  I primed them and then used paint sample size containers of paint that I picked up at Home Depot. One down side of paint samples is that they are not glossy. So I also picked up some spray clear coat. Looking back I should have just bought spray paint but they didn’t have the colors that I wanted and I had yet to totally fall in love with spray paint. I think I ended up putting at least four coats of paint on the yellow ones before calling it a day. Let’s call the yellow ones distressed.

I had my husband put some new hanging hardware on because I changed the orientation of some of the frames. I must have rearranged these frames a million times before I settled on the current (and final) arrangement.

I plan on putting something inside of these frames one day, but I still haven’t decided yet. I have a few key decorations, two antique ones I bought and a key that my husband had 3D printed for me. What do you think? Hit me up in the comments below.