Joyce Gallery

A personal gallery web app built for my mother's 50th birthday celebration. Guests could upload photos from the event and browse everyone's submissions in real time — creating a shared, living album that lasted beyond the night.

Background

My mom mentioned wanting a way to collect photos from the celebration. I took that idea and ran with it — building a full-stack gallery app in about a week using Next.js, TailwindCSS, and Cloudinary. No client brief, no professor, just a personal deadline that actually mattered.

Challenge

The site needed to work reliably in a real event setting — guests of all technical levels uploading and browsing photos simultaneously, in real time, without friction. Getting Cloudinary integrated cleanly for uploads and live gallery updates within a week-long build window was the core technical task.

Goal

To turn a simple request into something genuinely memorable. Every guest at the celebration could contribute to and browse a shared gallery as the night unfolded — and the result was a lasting digital keepsake of a family milestone. It's also a quiet reminder that the skills built across school projects and client work apply just as well to the things that matter personally.