Coastal Gallery Wall and Printable Set

A free printable set of a coastal gallery wall featuring antique ocean paintings and how to frame them inexpensively with thrifted finds.

Just so you know, our bathroom takes itself very seriously now.  If it were a person, it’d be the beret wearing, poetry spouting, pinky-up type.

Because it just got a mini art gallery all up in the corner in only THE fanciest place you could ever put an art gallery… above the toilet.

If you’re thinking, “Another gallery wall, Lauren?  Really? Don’t you have enough?”

The answer is no. No, I do not.  Because can you ever really have enough gallery walls?  Also no.

This one is way more funky and quirky than the others I’ve done in our living room, staircase, and dining room.  This one, even though it could smoke a cigarette and play the bongos in a dimly lit performance art club, it’s not nearly as traditional or as subdued as the others.

I always say bathrooms are where you can play the wild card.  Put up a unique wallpaper pattern that you wouldn’t dare put anywhere else.  Paint the walls a bold hue.  Or, this time, gather up a bunch of thrifted frames, print a bunch of free public domain art, and have a party.

I really was drawing a blank on this giant wall before:

But since the goal was for us to spend as little as possible on this master bathroom refresh and to try using as many resources as we already had, this big wall of coastal landscapes definitely achieved that.

I gathered up all of the old frames lying around in my stash that I could find and brought home a few more from the thrift store for around $2-5 each to fill in the gaps.  And I dug through a TON of public domain archives to find all kinds of beautiful antique paintings of ocean scenes.

I figured the ocean pictures were bound to have shades of the blue/green color we used on our vanity cabinets, and the beach is my happy place anyway, so why not?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m “team anti-bossy art” and against art with eyes in the bathroom, and coastal art avoids both of those, thankfully.

Supplies Used:

(Some affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here.)

• Thrifted frames
• Krylon Brushed Metallic spray paint
• Rustoleum Silver spray paint
• Silver Leaf Rub n Buff
• 10 pack of white poster board
• Pencil
• Ruler and/or tape measure
• Scissors or paper cutter
• Double-sided Scotch tape
• Coastal prints (a link to the free printable set is at the bottom of this post)

Here are the steps I used:

1. I split my picture frame collection into three groups to paint with two different types of silver spray paint and a silver Rub n’ Buff to make them look cohesive but not completely matching. (Our faucets in this bathroom are brushed nickel, so I wanted to tie them in with those.)

2. For the coastal prints, I just printed off the 8×10 and smaller sizes from a computer printer.  And I chose a couple of favorite large sized prints to have printed from Shutterfly (with a coupon code, of course).

3. To make some of them look matted, I just cut out white poster board (a big pack for $5) that I fit to the size of my frames, stuck the pictures I cut out onto the front of the poster board with some simple Scotch tape, placed them in the frames, and I swear you can’t even tell.

Lola, my little shadow, helped me, of course.

4. To arrange them on the wall, I used my usual gallery wall planning trick by tracing my frames, cutting them out on my remaining poster board (leftover Christmas wrapping paper works well too), and taping them up to decide until I was totally happy with the look.

The entire wall cost around $50 total.  Not too shabby, huh?

If you want the coastal gallery wall printable set, you can click here or the button below to subscribe and get them in your inbox:  

If you’re currently a subscriber, the file is already in your email (or you can access the printable library from the bottom of every Bless’er House email).

Now that this art is up, this master bathroom is officially FINISHED!  I’ll be sharing its full reveal next week. Ahhhh! Can’t wait!  It’s so good.

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