While work continues on reupholstering the second vintage sofa, I thought it might be fun to let you peek into my living room to see my retro mishmash gallery wall.

It is a long wall — hard to photograph all at once!

Usually when someone puts together a gallery wall, the preferred method to use is as follows: collecting a wide array of decor — framed art, wall hangings, shelves and such — laying out the collection to carefully compose an arrangement and finally hanging it on the wall. While making my mishmash retro gallery wall, I reversed the process — starting with a blank wall, gradually collecting pieces to fill it, and hanging them as I went.

It all started with the mini ranch house shelves that I made a few years ago to display my mini chair collection (and zombies). Next came a starburst clock and my awesome Shag print. From that point on, whenever I ran across something I liked, I tried to think if it would work for one of the ‘blank’ spots on the wall. As time went by, the wall filled up nicely.

Some of my favorite pieces on the wall are pieces of original art. When I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida last June for The Hukilau tiki festival, I found this awesome piece by local artist Michelle Bickford.

I just love how she adds small wooden cars to the scene — and I am amazed at her ability to cut out such small pieces! For reference, each car is about an inch and a half or so long. 

I also managed to score a tiki themed midcentury house painting by artist El Gato Gomez for the wall — perfect!

Not long ago, I found this midcentury boomerang shaped shelf at my local antique mall. I’m still trying to get the right arrangement of items on the shelf, but even the empty shelf looks nice up on the wall.

I’ve been collecting clocks over the last year or so too. Some of them work (but I don’t wind them every 8 days) and some of them don’t, so I just make sure I know which one has the correct, working time and set the other clocks all to different times to make my guests think they are going crazy. (Just kidding!)

I love that this wall is a combination of things I made, found midcentury items, original artwork, toys and prints — even if it is a retro mishmash.