Our den isn’t totally finished yet (will it ever be?), but we’ve gotten to the point now where the den definitely feels like home, and like a reflection of us.
Bringing in bold turquoise and orange through placemat pillows and glass floats added splashes of my favorite thing – color!! But what finally made the space feel like a real home was hanging our new art series on the far wall – a wall that was formerly sooooo blank and boring.
I whipped up those babies one night after getting a little inspiration from the chalkboard in this living room by Margot Austin.
Wanna make some for yourself? Here’s how to do it:
1. Round up the goods. You may already have most of the necessary supplies on hand, like I did. Here’s what you need.
~ frames w/ mats, the number and color that you want (I used 3 of this frame from Ikea)
~ paint for your background color (I used my free paint)
~ a foam brush
~ a paint pen (I used a white one with a chisel tip)
~ a ruler
~ painter’s tape
2. Do the prep work. Remove the mats and backing from the frames, and set the frames aside. For this project, you’re going to use the smooth side of the particle board backing as your paint surface (you could cut down art paper or cardboard to use instead, but I think it makes more sense to just use what you already have on hand). Use your foam brush and background paint to paint the smooth side of the particle board. You will probably need several coats of paint (I needed 2), and let the boards dry between each coat.
3. Bust out the ruler. I wanted each line of scribbles to look uniform, so I ran a line of painter’s tape around each side of the boards and then marked out the height of each of my scribbles and the space between each line of the scribbles. To do this, I used the width of my ruler as the height of each scribble, and the width of the painter’s tape as the distance between each line of scribbles. (Note: don’t put painter’s tape on the mat – it will tear away little pieces of the mat and look terrible.)
4. The fun part! Here’s where you get to channel your inner child and start scribbling. You might want to try out a few practice scribbles before you actually start painting on your “canvas” – you want to try to keep each scribble the same size and height so that everything looks very graphic instead of messy.
5. Enjoy! This has to be the easiest art projects ever, but it’s also one of my favorites. It was a lot of fun to do, and I think the finished product looks so awesome – fun and graphic and a bit whimsical.
So now that you’ve seen what we’re rockin’ out at our house, what’s hanging on your walls? Are you photograph-type people, or do you prefer framed art? Or maybe it’s a collection of your kid’s cutest doodles? Spill the beans!
FYI – I hung these art panels on the wood paneling the same way I did here.
This post is shared with The DIY Show Off, Thrifty Decor Chick, Between Naps on the Porch, Cottage Instincts, Making the World Cuter, Twice Remembered, The Girl Creative, and A Soft Place to Land.
