DIY Color Swatch Art

The wall in front of my table in the craft room had been blank and drab forever. My initial plan was to add a pegboard but husband had a fit at the number of holes we would be making in the wall in the process. Check out the rest of my Craft Room/Study here.

While watching the Fixer Upper series, I noticed some Color Swatch Art in one of the styled houses and literally fell in love with the idea. I knew that this would be the perfect pop of inspiration I needed on my wall, also adding color to the space.


The same day, we were off to Spotlight to get some canvases for the purpose. I grabbed 8 of the 11"x14" ones for 2$ each. (SCORE!) Just look at the transformation!

Supplies needed: 

• 11"x14" canvas - 8
  (Technically, the number and the size of the canvas would depend on the size of the wall you would like to cover with this project)
• Acrylic Paint
  (In the colors you would like to paint, or you could mix up colors to make new ones, totally up to you!)
• Alphabet Stencils 
• Mod Podge
• Pencil
• Ruler 
• Eraser

Directions:

1. I started with creating an outline for the color swatch with a pencil and a ruler. I wanted a 1 cm border around three sides, just because I think that looked better. My measurements of the square hence, turned out to be 25.5cm x 25.5cm. I created these on all the canvases as a guide for the paint.
    
   
2. Then I decided on the color palette I wanted to paint, and started to fill in the squares with the decided colors. I decided on the following shades: Crimson Red, Cadmium Yellow, Cobalt Blue, and made some pastel and neutral shades: Jade Green, Lilac Purple, Light Pink, Steel Grey and a Bright Orange. The painting need not be perfect, so I slapped the paint on!
   
   
   
   
   
3. Once this was complete, I stenciled out the color names on the bottom of each swatch canvas with pencil. I could have spelled out the exact color, but I only wanted to replicate the look and feel of a swatch, so kept it super simple!
   
   
   
4. With black paint I filled in these words. This was the most time consuming and tiring part of the entire project since this needed to be precise. You could use other mediums to do this, but I wanted to paint.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Once everything was dried up, I mod podged all the canvases to seal and finish them up. This gave them a professional look and removed any major inconsistencies in paint color.
   
   
   

   

Two more to finish, and that's it, all done and ready to hang... love them to pieces! We used 3M Picture strips to hang these canvases. Trying to figure out the arrangement here:

And this is what the final arrangement looks like! They add such a fun vibe to the room and lots of pops of colors - perfect accompaniment to my doodle wall!

Hope these have inspired you to make something fun and colorful for your home! 

Xoxo

Divya