Hey there, everybody!
So, today I have something for you that sprouted up from my need to very quickly produce cute little things to go on my dorm room walls this year. And, of course, seeing as I am a broke college student, these things obviously need to be two things: adorable and
cheap!
So,
with that in mind, I set off to look through my pile of craft supplies,
trying to determine what in the world to do for my walls. Within
seconds, I knew exactly what I was going to do! Without further ado,
today's project:
A
pretty (and super simple) silhouette painting for one of my walls! (Please excuse the
awful quality of the pictures throughout this DIY. They were taken with
my poor phone because my digital camera has decided to hide from me...)
ANYWAY! On to the tutorial! :D
Materials Needed:
A sheet of foam board (I
advise looking at Dollar General/Dollar Store for this. I got mine for
ONE DOLLAR. I was quite pleased with this, to say the least. My pocket
was, too.)
Acrylic paint
A paint brush
A pencil
An x-acto knife (A pair of scissors will do if that's all you have on hand.)
So, the first thing you need to do is decide how
large you want your painting to be. I had a little over half of a piece
of foam board left over from a previous project, so I decide to use
about a third of that. In the end, my piece is 10 1/2 inches wide and 14
1/2 inches tall. If you want to make sure yours is cut perfectly
straight, you could use a ruler and your pencil to carefully draw a line
to cut by. I just went by eye and hoped for the best. (Which will
probably drive me crazy at a later date when I'm staring at it on my
wall, noticing how wacky its shape is...)
Once you have your size figured out, take your x-acto knife and
begin to start cutting your foam sheet. If you've never cut this kind of
foam before, my best bit of advise is to cut shallowly at first, just
getting past the first bit of paper and the foam during your first cut.
Then go back and carefully follow the cut you've already made to cut all
the way through. It's just a bit easier in the long run, and you don't
have to press nearly as hard on your poor x-acto knife. :)
Yay! Now we have our base done! The next thing you need to do is
decide what you're going to paint on it! Make it something you'll like! I
decided that I wanted a silhouette on top of a chevron pattern because I
thought it would be something I would enjoy. (And I do, of course.) I
didn't quite trust myself to try to freehand a silhouette, so I went and
found one to use and printed it out. After I printed it out, I
proceeded to cut it out with my x-acto knife.
After I had my silhouette cut out, I placed it on my piece of
foam board. I put mine somewhere close to the middle. Experiment with
moving your image around on the board before you commit to it. You might
like it more somewhere else! After I finally had my image situated, I
held it down and used my pencil to trace around it.
For my chevron background, I (approximately) found the middle of
my board and drew a faint line from the bottom to the top so I would
know where the middle was. From that, I started to flesh out my chevron
pattern. All you have to do is start at your middle point, decide how
big of a slope you want, and draw the line. Another super easy way to do
this would be to use a ruler and carefully trace out your lines. In the
end, mine ended up looking like this:
Now it's time to paint! I decided to work with black, silver, and
a mint green! I started out by painting every other line of my chevron
pattern the mint green. (Even though my lines went through my
silhouette, I didn't paint into the actual lines of my silhouette.) Once
that was finished, I painted two lines of my chevron pattern at the top
and bottom silver. I had originally planned on painting them all, but I
decided that I liked it better with the white showing through in the
middle. Do yours however you think you will like it best! (I might do
some sort of a rainbow next...)
After I finished my chevron pattern, I moved on to my
silhouette. I filled it in with black and left it alone to dry for a few
minutes. When I came back, I checked over the painting to see if any of
the paint needed an extra coat or if I had missed anything. Naturally I
had, so I quickly patched everything up and painted the side of my foam
board. You could skip this part if you wanted, but I highly recommend
it. It gives it a bit more depth and made it look more polished, in my
opinion. I painted the sides of mine the mint green color.
AND VOILA! You now have a cute wall decoration with all sorts of potential that won't break the bank!
I am definitely excited about this piece. It's going to look fantastic on my walls. :3
So, let me know what you think! I'd absolutely
love
to see yours if anyone chooses to make it! If you have any questions,
feel free to leave a comment or email me, and I'll get to it as soon as
possible! :D
