Gallery wall hack for when you have expensive taste, but an inexpensive budget

Do you love the look of large matte frame gallery walls, but don't want to spend hundreds on photo frames? Are you ballin' on a budget too? Then this is the post for you!

I love the look of frames like these, or these; but I just can't bring myself to pay $50 a frame. I mean- if you're doing a 9 photo gallery wall (something I'm currently working on in another space in our home), that brings your gallery wall total to roughly $450. In the words of Randy Jackson: that's gonna be a NO from me dawg.

I don't know why frames like these don't exist for cheaper, but I've yet to find a matte photo frame larger than 12x12 that wasn't going to break the bank.

CUE: my gallery wall frame hack achieving this same look, for nearly 1/10th of the price.

The big secret? Hobby Lobby. Not Hobby Lobby frames though, but their wall decor. Little known fact, Hobby Lobby has tons of different sized framed images that actually have gorgeous matte finishes. They're staged as already complete wall art, but - okay here's the hack- the existing photo be removed and reused for your own photos with just a little bit of work.

The best part? These wall art frames range in price from $11.99 - $19.99 full price, based on size, BUT, they pretty regularly go on sale for 50% off, or you can pull their coupon for 40% off from their website. So with this discount, we're talking about frames as low as $7. You really can't beat that. But let me explain:

You can start with a frame like this:

*Note: They have a much larger selection in store than online. Don't forget to use a coupon if it's not already on sale!

If you take a knife/scissors and remove the brown paper from the back, you'll see there is some foam board. From there, you can cut the foam board away (this is the part that takes some patience - as its glued). Make sure you cut the hole big enough to reveal the entire image. Once cut, you can simply remove that image, and place your own in its place. You can either place a piece of foam board back in its place to cover your image, or just leave it plain and use a piece of tape to secure it (after all, it is the back of the photo frame, so no one will ever know/see it).

Mine ended up looking like this from the back - and I just left it like this because I'm lazy, and again, no one will ever see it:

That's pretty much it. Thats my gallery wall decor hack :) Might not be for everyone, and if this isn't for you, thats totally fine, but can't beat an $8 white matte frame.

For reference, the ones we used in the pictures here were approximately 17x17 inches matted to an 8x8 opening.

End result using this hack in our master bedroom: