Photography | Jewels at Home

Week One: Urban Boutique Bedroom Construction and Inspiration
Week Two: “If These Walls Could Talk” Gallery Wall

I seriously love the One Room Challenge. It’s just the motivation I need to finish off projects. I’ve been puttering away preparing the gallery wall in our new bedroom, and with this week’s progress update launching, I got the energy to finish hanging everything after work today!

As a reminder, this room is bedroom addition we built last year. It’s going to be a room for our oldest, when he’s home, and also serve as a guest room or lounge! It’s a petite space, but I had big plans for this wall, and I really feel like it opens up the room!

If you are looking for tips for your own gallery wall, here are some ideas to consider:

let an overall impression guide you – my inspiration spaces contained art that felt light, with large white mats or lots of negative space.
Consider a theme – I chose items that represent the outdoors, wanting to make this narrow space feel more open
choose items with meaning -these walls can talk, because every item here has a story behind it!
for a collected look, mix multiple types of art, such as paintings, photographs, prints, and three-dimensional objects
DIY items, such as a fabric-covered picture mat or your own photographs
Use paper cutouts of your items to help you design the layout

Here’s a before-and-after look at the space:

This collection includes a DIY fabric-covered picture mat and a photo I took of Finn and printed at the local drugstore.

As I said, these walls can talk! Clockwise from left, a photograph taken from Fort Point, under the Golden Gate Bridge, that Steve and I bought at an art fair ~25+ years ago; an LED sign with my son’s name that my sister sent from Hong Kong; a small canvas print of a photo I took, featuring spring blossoms and Victorian houses; photo of Finn I took and printed; nasturtium print by Henry Evans calendar under a DIY fabric mat. My friend Penny gifts me a Henry Evans calendar every Christmas!

More treasures: paper silhouette cut-out from the Canadian National Exhibition when I was a child; strawberry ceramic bowl I bought at an art fair with a friend ~25 years ago; Vassar College pennant for my oldest; 1924 newspaper found in the walls of our last house; replica Group of Seven Canadian landscape painting my parents got on an Air Canada flight ~30 years ago; fern print from another Henry Evans calendar.

Last of the treasures: a beautiful branch painting by my mom ❤

I’m working away on some other projects that I hope to share with you soon! In the meantime, you can see all the other fun room transformations on the One Room Challenge website!

Julie AKA “Jewels”

My kids are so happy in the water, and yet I’ve missed pictures of many of those moments, because I needed to keep my phone high and dry.

So, for this year’s summer vacation, I decided to buy a waterproof phone pouch. Even though I tested it according to the instructions, it was still scary to put my phone in the water the first time. After I got the hang of it, though, it has been a lot of fun.

Although you can control the phone buttons through the case, I found it to be hard to do. My husband came up with the idea of setting the timer for the pictures. The timer on the iPhone takes a burst of ten photos, so you can usually capture some good moments and delete the rest. Another note is that the water cuts down on light, so taking your underwater pictures at the brightest spot possible helps.

These are some of my first experiments. JJ loves the diving weights, and it was fun to capture him playing with them.