painted 'paint chip' wall art

in a past post, i used pink paint chip cards to make decorative hearts.

i also talked about how it is decidedly NOT cool 

to grab handfuls of paint chip cards from your local hardware or paint store, 

and suggested a few ways to obtain said paint chip cards without being greedy.

today, i came up with another alternative - just paint your own 'paint chips'!

i grabbed some heavy white paper and some craft paints to try out my idea,

and it works so well that i immediately made some wall art out of it!

continue reading for an easy paint tutorial,
and in just a short time, you can have SHEETS of 'paint chips' to craft & decorate with!

'Paint Chip' 

painting tutorial

(just for reference!) 

you'll need some heavy white paper - posterboard and cardstock work well.

i used a heavy paper bag because i have a HUGE box full of them.

grab a ruler or yardstick and a pencil, and mark off lines much like a paint chip has -

thin white lines in between wider bands of color.

 i used craft paints for my test, because that's what i had on hand...

i simply mixed my own shades of green, from light to dark, to create a gradient effect.

(because the paper i used was large, i repeated the pattern from the outer edge to the center.)

i painted a stripe on one side of the paper, then moved to the other side to paint it's 'reflection' -

that gave each stripe time to dry without me having to stop painting.

my brush is a nylon angled brush about 3/4 wide - that's a SHARP edge on it,

which helped me keep my edge lines relatively straight.

if you seek perfection, use painters' tape for crisp edges!

you could use a thin black Sharpie marker to add paint names on the color stripes, 

as shown on the paint chip cards shown up above.

.

when dry, i used the paper to cover some simple box lids

(see this wall art post to see how i do that - basically like wrapping a gift!)

and hung my new 'art' on our living room gallery wall:

i love how this simple element brings spring style to this wall -

and how painting these gives me more material to work with than actual paint chip cards do.

i also used this in a very sweet, simple little project that's perfect for St Patrick's Day - stay tuned!

[you know, as i was working on this project, i was thinking...

paint companies would make a FORTUNE if they'd print up 

wrapping paper and WALL PAPER that looked like paint chip cards. 

because all of us would be using it in our projects. riiiiight???

hey Sherwin Williams, Behr, Vista, Benjamin Moore, Dunn-Edwards, Pratt & Lambert -

you're welcome. now get on that, ok?!]