We have two sets of short flights of stairs in our house, they are about 7 steps each. One goes up to the main bathroom and three bedrooms, and the other goes down to the half-basement family room, laundry room, and tiny three-quarter bath.

Our house is a tri-level so from the main level, you can easily see the landing at the top of the ones that go up and down into the family room from the ones that go down.

Since you can see the stair landing and the wall at the top of the stairs so easily, I thought it needed a little zhuzhing... something to make it a little more exciting. How about a gallery wall?

I love gallery walls, do you? To me, they are so fun. They can be just a gathering of favorite art (paintings, prints, photographs) or they can have other dimensional elements added into the mix like shelves, baskets, and sculptural pieces. They can be a certain theme or just random things that somehow... miraculously... look good together! I don't think I've ever seen a boring gallery wall!

So, let me show you how I created mine 😊

Arched Butterfly Gallery Wall

I decided to give my gallery wall the extra pizazz I thought it needed with a painted arch background.

To draw my arch on the wall, I used a pencil tied with a string that I pinned to the center of the wall. 

Once you have the string pinned to the center of the wall, you simply pull it taught and draw an arch, keeping the string taught the entire time.

Once I had the arch drawn, I then taped the whole thing off.

There is a trick to getting perfectly crisp lines when you are using painter's tape...

First, go over the edge of the tape with a credit card or something similar to ensure it is stuck down really well with no air bubbles or wrinkles.

Then paint over that edge with the regular wall color. This way, when the paint bleeds under the tape (and it will no matter what type of tape you use unless you have a perfectly flat wall with no texture), it will be the wall color and not the color of your arch.

Once that has dried, paint the arch.

See how nice that looks?!😃

I chose black because I am creating black accents all over the house. The doors out to the backyard are black, the stairs are black, and I just painted the Upcycled Gun Cabinet black too.

Now to create my butterfly gallery wall. Here are the things I'm planning to use (although I added a couple more things before I was finished!)

These are all thrifted. First I hung up the picture rail shelf. I found this at Goodwill for $4.99. And I put my freebie treasured vintage radiator in front.

I found the hook in the house when we bought it and the butterfly specimen box was $5 at a garage sale.

Here's a fun little video showing the time-lapse creation of the gallery.

Next, I added the shelf I made from a Repurposed Bronze Baby Shoe that was free!

The brass vase with some dried baby's breath adds a little interest. The vase was thrifted, for $1.99, and the baby's breath was in a bouquet of roses that I received.

Two small, round pressed butterfly frames were propped on top of the specimen box. These were found at Goodwill for .99 cents each.

I then added a larger, square-framed butterfly. 

I covered the gold metal frame with washi tape years ago, here's a better picture. I'm considering this a freebie from shopping in my own home since I did this way back in 2013!

Another round pressed butterfly was then added to the top of the large specimen box. It was mere pennies, read about the fun thrifting adventure where I found it here: Treasure Trove Tuesday - This Week's Thrifting Finds.

My daughter gave me two glass cloches with butterfly floral arrangements inside that she found while thrifting with my mom. I put one on the little shelf.

And last, I just recently found the oval framed one at a garage sale for $1.00, I added it next to the vase.

So for now, my gallery wall is done although as I'm writing this post, I just remembered THESE!! I have to incorporate them somehow.

I love how this turned out, it makes going up the stairs much better and I smile each time!

PIN ME!