Simply Made Sunday: Paint Chip Sunset

Welcome to Emily’s Simply Made Series! Each post features a craft that looks cute or is practical but is easy enough for even the uncraftiest of people. Cute DIY things are NOT just for the pros! You can do it too!

Have you seen this phenomenon sweeping the internet? Well if you’re anything like me, you have probably seen quite a few Paint Chip Art posts flying around getting pinned and re-pinned.

WHY are these getting pinned and re-pinned at a crazy rate? Um. Have you seen them?! They’re super cute, you can make practically anything with them, and best of all, it’s almost free!!!!! No really, I spent $15 for the GIANT canvas (with a 50% off coupon) and that’s all I spent, but I could have made this for free.

So when trying to find art for Miles’s room in our new home, I knew that I would try my hand at paint chip art to make it exactly the way I wanted.

When designing a “big boy room” for him, and I wanted to decorate the room in cheery colors. I am so inspired by sunsets. They amaze me, and the colors of a simple sunset are gorgeous, no? So we decided on a blue, orange and white room.

So I headed over to my local Home Improvement store and ganked as many paint chips I could feel ok with taking (I ended up going back with my sister in law to get more a few days later when I realized I wanted a big canvas for it). When taking paint samples, if you feel as guilty as I did (they’re free folks, no need for the guilt…but I felt bad anyway) my advice is to frown at them as you look for the right colors. It makes you look like you’re really concentrating on what colors to paint your mansion. You know, the one in the Hollywood Hills? I also advise to take 5-10 of each sample. When you get to about 5 or 6 samples, stick them in your purse and keep going.

I do not have a good number for how many samples you will need. Sorry. We took…a lot.

This is maybe 1/10th of what I used.

The other items you need for this project are

A canvas of your choice. Mine is 14″ x 29″
a Circle punch (available at craft stores.) I used the Fiskars “medium” size
Mod Podge
an Exacto knife

Start by punching as many circles as you possibly can out of the different shades of paint chips.

Now. I used a BUNCH of colors,

and just separated them into blues and oranges. I WISH I would have separated them even more so. Like into 10 or 12 piles, going from dark orange, medium orange, light orange, etc. all the way to dark blue. If you are doing a more complex piece I really reccomend this to save you a lot of time and hassle. If you are doing a simple design, like just a simple gradient of only a few colors then just separate those colors into a few piles.

Next, come up with your design. This took me a long time. I knew I wanted it to be sunset inspired, but it was hard to decide how I would do it. Once I figured it out, then it was just a matter of scattering the circles onto the canvas and into place, leaving no white space. I went all willy nilly with my circles, but if you are into a more uniform look, by all means make lines with them. I am too lazy for lines. 🙂

If you are doing a larger canvas, I reccommend taking breaks 3 or 4 times to put the Mod Podge on to make sure your design stays the way you want it.

For a smaller canvas, just do this at the end. How do you Mod Podge over all these little paper circles, you ask? Well, thankfully I had lots of trial and error for your sake. Best way to do this without messing up your circles is to pour the Mod Podge over the circles. Just drizzle it over the area you’ve finished, trying to get it all over. Then take a paintbrush and carefully move the glue over the circles. Some WILL move. If you want, go ahead and put the Mod Podge onto the canvas before you place the circles on if you’re uncomfortable with this, but I couldn’t scatter the circles as well when I did that. So I took the hard route…

Do this the over the whole canvas. Again, if you made enough piles of the different shades this is a lot easier, and will not take you a week and a half like it did for me.

When it is all finished (and you hear that HALLELUJA chorus in your head), and has dried, lift up the circles where you can (some of it will be stuck to the canvas) and paint a little Mod Podge to glue it on, then paint one more coat of it over the entire piece.

When it is all dry and hard, take your Exacto knife and cut the edges to be flush with the canvas. (I do not have a pic of this…)

Then hang it for all to see.

Can you see the dimension? I love how it’s not all flat against the canvas!

I love it, and how CHEAP it was! All the canvas art I’d been looking at was between $100-$300 for this size, and none were the right colors anyway! I got a big custom art piece for $15. Check out the other awesome things I made for my son’s Blue & Orange Room HERE