DIY: Wall Art Decor

As I’ve said before, J and I decided it would be a pain to paint our apartment walls only to have to possibly paint them back to a boring white color when we move.  I was browsing through pinterest.com pages when I found this awesome, easy way to add a pop of color to the room.

This weekend I bought all of the supplies:

·      a 24x36 canvas (for only $10 with the store’s sale and a 20% off coupon!)

·      a 16x20 canvas (couldn’t pass up a good deal!)

·      paint (for the larger canvas: for the smaller canvas:)

·      three small sponge brushes and one large sponge brush

·      I couldn’t find ¼” painters tape so I bought ¼” quilter’s tape and ¾” electrical tape.

I promise this project is minimally messy and pretty quick.  If you want to follow thenewdomestic.com’s method then you will first need to create a mock version of your painting.  Instead of doing this I just haphazardly put tape down on my canvas.  (*Note: If you decide to use electrical tape make sure to really press it down into the canvas as it will peel up a little if you don’t and you will not end up with totally clean lines.)

I also chose not to pre-decide where I wanted each color to go.  I just knew that with the larger canvas I wanted red to be the main color and on the smaller canvas dark blue would be more present.  I used a Tupperware containers and a lid as a palette and worked on the smaller canvas first. 

Like I said before I did not plan out which sections would be what color.  As I went I would just think that an area looked like it was too much dark blue and needed a splash of light blue.  I did the same with my larger canvas, but I also knew that the color I wanted the least of was the dark brown because I didn’t want the painting to make the room look dark.   I painted 2-3 coats of each color because some needed the extra layer to look the way I wanted it to be.

My paint directed that I wait 1 hour between layers of paint, but to be honest it was pretty dry after 10 minutes so I just went on to the next layers when it was dry to touch.  I waited about 5-10 minutes after the last layer before peeling off the strips of tape.  Make sure to pull the tape in order (some of mine overlapped) otherwise you could ruin some of your straight lines if your paint is not totally dry!

 

I let both canvases dry overnight before attempting to hang them (just so I wouldn’t accidentally get paint on the wall.  The paint brand that I purchased says it takes 21 days for the paint to cure so J and I decided that we would wait to hang up the canvas in the bathroom until then because the moisture from showering might cause it not to cure completely or make the paint run.  (That doesn’t mean I can’t take a picture to show you what it would look like!)  We did decide, however, that the large canvas could go up in the living/dining room without waiting for the paint to cure.

The nice things about the canvases that I purchased is that they are light and instead of hammering nails into the apartment walls, we just used thumbtacks to hold them up instead of possibly hammering nails into wiring in the walls.

Doesn't it add such a great punch of color to both rooms!?  What home decor have you created for a fraction of what it would've cost to purchase that item in a store?