about a month ago i had the opportunity to guest blog for kate at chic on a shoestring decorating. i am still loving this chevron canvas and wanted to make sure all of my readers got a chance to see how it was made.
the wall above my bed was seeming very sparse and the blank, white space just seemed to be calling out to me to cover it up with something colorful.
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| absolutely drab |
So I conjured up an idea in my head that I would become an artist and
paint a giant canvas to slap up there. This canvas was to include chevrons. Are
you sick of chevrons yet? Because I’m not. If I had it my way, everything
would be chevroned. Including the canvas above my bed.
I didn’t have a spare canvas laying around, but if you did, you could
just paint over it and use that. I moseyed on over to Hob Lob and used a 40%
off coupon to purchase mine. For the paint, I knew that I would need lots
(because I really have no idea what I’m doing) so I decided to use house paint.
Its much easier to pick the exact colors you want without having to mix (or so
I thought) and its much more cost effective. I purchased Behr sample pots in three different colors for
about $3 each.
to make the chevron pattern i used painter's tape and a right angle tool to mark off crisp lines. i found it to be easiest to start at the bottom at work my way up. i only had to use the right angle for the first row and then used the tape as my guide for each subsequent stripe. using a craft knife, i was able to cut the excess tape used to mark off the chevrons in order to get a sharp angle.
To measure all of the other lines i used the width of the tape as my guide. I used painter's tape in a 1inch width. For the thickest chevrons i used two pieces of tape, side by side, as a template for where to place the next chevron. Does that even make sense? If not, here's a picture:
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| two pieces of tape mark the two-inch space between chevrons. |
i wanted the chevrons to gradually get darker as well as thicker as they progressed down the canvas. they start out at one inch apart, graduate to one and a half inches, then end up being two inches apart towards the bottom. measuring and taping took me about one episode of one tree hill (i'm embarrassingly obsessed with that show right now...it's on netflix instant play).
once you're taped off, you're ready to paint! i had three colors i intended on working with for this project: a light gray (stone fence), a light blue (newport blue), and a darker blue (heron).
for the three upper rows i used my white base color and gradually added more stone fence for each row. i did the same for each color i used in order to make the colors fade in a uniform way.
The more i painted, the more i started to dislike the Stone Fence color. The gray was just too dark for
the look that I was going for. It seemed to dry a lot darker than the swatch I
had initially picked out. I wasn’t feeling the final product, so once i was finished I painted over
the top 3 rows and started over. That’s what is so great about painting. Don’t
like it? Do it again! Van Gogh did it all the time, I’m sure. Its nothing to stress over…in fact, I
loooove knowing that I can just redo it and nobody has to know. Except for all
of you. Drat. Anyways, I tossed the grey color to the curb and used the lovely Newport Blue. Same strategy: pour a little blue in a lot of white and then add
some more color as you progress rows.
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| I realized about three rows in that i wasn't going to love the gray. |
Now all you have to do is peel off the painter’s tape and cross your
fingers that you stuck it on well enough. Which I did. In most some places.
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| i ended up liking the raw edges. i think it gives it character :) |
here is my end result:
i really enjoyed this project. it took me a few hours to complete (not counting a trip to the mall to wait for the paint to dry) and if you got into it with the just-paint-over-it-if-you-don't-like-it frame of mind i think that you will do just fine. is my painting perfect? no. are the chevrons perfectly measured? absolutely not. and remember how i was trying to pick specific colors to avoid all this mixing of paint nonsense? as if. i had to mix every. single. color. i, however, really enjoyed how it turned out. and it gives the perfect little pop of color to the empty space above my bed.
is this something you would try? or are you just sick to death of chevrons? either way, i hope you liked this little diy and that it will inspire you to jazz up some of your empty walls.
