Creating a tropical art gallery with Wayfair

Recently I was thrilled to become a member of the Home Expert programme with Wayfair and this month they asked a few of us to create a gallery wall using some pieces from The Art Group.

The themes were entirely our choice and I enjoyed looking for inspiration that would lead me to the the tropical theme I eventually decided on.

I’ve always loved the idea of gallery walls and mixing and matching prints and designs. We used to have a gallery wall of family photos going up the stairs in our old house and I liked that I could just add them as we pleased.

Unfortunately we don’t have stairs where we live now, but I think that the hallway will become a similar place for me to collect all the photos in one place.

The most obvious place in our house, that was crying out for something to fill it, was our hallway area. It’s nice and spaceous and just one of those areas that isn’t used for anything but we’re always in and out (naturally). We needed a focal point for when you walk in the front door.

When it comes to putting up prints, I’m never sure what works best with regards to postitioning them. I like the idea of just randomly placing them but I also rather like having things in some kind of order!

I really struggle with that one, but gradually I’m finding places that work better than others and to just be a little more relaxed with how things can be put up. This time, I opted for symmetry.

At the moment, I’m loving greenery and I want to fill my home with all kinds of plants, always in the hope that I won’t kill the poor things.  My eyes were immediately drawn to the Palm Leaves canvas when I first had a look at the artwork available and I knew straight away that I wanted the prints to match together well, so that I could incorporate other designs around them.

It didn’t take me long to come across the Monstera Leaves canvas, as I have been wanting an actual ‘Swiss cheese plant’ for quite some time. I still haven’t manage to to track one down yet in the shops…

I then wondered what would go well between the two and found this Banana Leaves print in a frame, which made the perfect centre piece to the pair.

To accompany my love of all things tropical, I wanted to add elements of gold to compliment the green. Again all tropical themed but I found gold prints were harder to come by.

This is where I decided to add my own simple designs to work around the art prints.  We’ve had a foil laminator for a little while now and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to get it out and whip up some gold foil prints in the style I had in mind.

If you fancy foiling yourself, then you will need a laminator that heats up fairly hot, some foil designed to be used with them and an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers use black toner ink and this is important to enable the foil to adhere to the design when placed through the laminator. Laser printers simply won’t work.

My husband designed the pineapple, flamingo and monstera leaf and I printed them out and then foiled them. It’s a really great way of making images look really effective and add a slightly different dimension to them.

The finished result

I’m really happy with the finished result but I still reckon there is room to expand with plants and accessorising the unit, not to mention adding more gold at some point too. The shelves are quite often bare, simply to deter my daughter from clearing them out! I can see a large Swiss cheese plant to one side and a nice comfy armchair to the other 🙂