DIY: Gold Diamond Wallpaper

Here is another fun, easy, and inexpensive wall accent! This is probably the easiest accent wall I have done. I actually did two adjacent walls this time and it only took a few hours, and about $4!! :)  This idea originated from a tutorial that Mandy from Vintage Revivals did. I loved it! She did triangles and the look was a little more modern than what I was going for. So I simply modified it to be diamonds!

Supplies needed:

• Snap chalk line (like THIS) 
• "Paint" Marker. I found mine at Walmart for $2! I used gold and for both walls I only used 2! Found in their craft section. 
• Yard Stick
• Tape measure

First thing you need to do is mark out your grid. You will need horizontal and vertical lines evenly spaced along your wall. The horizontal lines are wider apart and will determine the height of the diamond. The vertical lines are closer together and will determine the width. 

I went along and just made a small pencil mark every 16in for my vertical lines (mark at the top and bottom of the wall) and every 24in for the horizontal lines. After it is marked off you can snap your chalk line to "draw" a perfectly straight line! Simply line up your marks on the top and bottom of the wall and "snap" the chalk line.  Your wall should look like this when done:

Sorry for the bad lighting in these pictures..I did most of my work after the kiddos went to bed! :) 

I started my measurements, for both walls, from the shared corner and worked my way out. This way, partial diamonds would occur at the end of each wall allowing full diamonds to flow nicely through the shared corner.

Now that you have the grid all marked out, start drawing your diamonds! Use the yard stick for a straight line (you can get one in the paint section at Home Depot for under $1).

In the picture below I tried to highlight where your lines connect: 4 of the rectangles will make ONE diamond. You will draw a diagonal line across each of the small rectangles. The red lines represent my chalk lines that form my grid, the yellow is my paint maker line. 

Just make sure you only do one rectangle at a time! 

Also, when using the paint Markers you will want to shake them regularly to maintain a good flow! I would keep a paper plate with me and whenever the marker seemed to be running low I would press the tip onto the plate to get the paint running again. 

Once the first wall was done I wiped off the chalk with a damp cloth and moved to the next wall. 

Here are some "final" pictures..even though this room is far from being decorated! I love how simple this was! And it added fun character to the room without being overwhelming. 

The Gold is fairly light and hard to capture in a picture, but it is so beautiful in person! 

Sorry for the empty frame.. :) 

If you want something a little more bold, try a black marker! My neighbor did this and it turned out super cute!! 

What do you think??? Is it worth the $4?? :) 

DIY: Large Heart Stencil

I am slowly trying to get Miss Lucy's "Big Girl" room decorated...very slowly as it turns out.. ;) ha! Life with two kids is so different! But we are loving it! Anyways, this was such a simple and fun project. If you know me (or are probably starting to see..) I love accent walls! They are (usually) easy and leave a big impression.
For this project I just cut a large heart out of cardboard, traced it all over the wall, then filled it in with paint. Pretty simple! :)

BEFORE:

If you look closely you will see that I snapped a chalk line directly down the middle of the wall. This helped me line up my hearts--I started in the center and worked my way out. You could draw a line for each row if you want to be really careful. 

Sorry for the blurry picture, its hard to work and take pictures! :) I simply placed the heart on the wall and traced around it, I used a pencil but would actually recommend chalk so that you don't see any lines after painting. 

I used my pencil as a guide for even spacing since I didn't want to pull out a tape measure every time...

The pencil lines are hard to see, but you can see my first row of hearts centered on the chalk line and then I went out from there. 

Once I had stenciled the whole wall I went back and filled in the hearts with paint! 

Ta-da!!

I added a few random gold hearts for an accent color :) 

 Lucy loves it! Hahaha! her fake smile and "cheeeeeeese"  :) 

....and yes, she broke BOTH arms...!!!

Now to refinish a dresser and add some photos to the wall!! It never really ends, right?? :)

Nursery: Stenciled Herringbone Wall

I am so excited to share this with you today, I LOVE THIS WALL!! But first I need to confess that this was not my original idea--I totally copied it from Sawdust and Embryos. Check out her wall HERE; her whole blog is amazing, I love everything she does!

She gives a great tutorial, so I will just quickly summarize and show a bunch of pictures :) She did five sections, I thought that would be a little too big for my small room so I divided my wall into 6 sections, snapped the chalk line and taped it off.

..and I'll go ahead and apologize for poor picture quality; I have yet to figure out how to take a picture of a wall with a window.. so most of these were taken at night.

I picked 6 different colors for this wall and each color had its own stencil. I made all of my stencils to help cut down cost! The red trellis, black triangles, and yellow polka dots I cut with my Silhouette--easy peasy. I thought you could also find a simple scrapbook cut-out/punch in the size of triangle and circles you want and use that to cut out your stencil of you do not have a Silhouette. 

The Light blue trellis stencil I made using a TP roll! :) Super easy! Just dip it in a bit of paint and stamp!

The pink wavy lines I originally intended to use Frog tape for--but it was EXPENSIVE! So I figured I could draw squiggly lines and paint them in ;) Use chalk to draw, paint it, then wipe the chalk off when the paint has dried. 

..making progress...

My last stencil was the turquoise flowers. This was a stencil that I cut by hand a few years ago. I used it in our mud room to make cardboard boxes into cute shoe storage boxes.  

This is a slow process, if you have never stenciled before you might find it intimidating! :) But it is pretty basic. I found it easier and faster to do 2-3 stencils at a time. Most of my stencils would overlap on itself so I would do one stencil and let it dry for a bit while I did another color, then switch back and forth...make sense??

..see how I line it up by overlapping it?? 

..this is two stencils widths across..

More Progress...

And the funnest part---Taking off the tape!!

I Love how it turned out!!!!!!!!

Check out my easy pom-pom back drop HERE!

I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! 

Tutorial: Stenciled Curtains

Today I am going to share with you my super easy way to stencil curtains....without painting!!

That is right, no painting involved.

I bought the Merete Curtains from IKEA and  I love them! They are nice and thick, super long, and only $25 a PAIR!! However, with white walls and white curtains my husband thought it was a little boring :) I have been debating forever over what to do with them, stripes and what color, a stencil, ribbon trimming, etc. My biggest fear though was painting them. I have heard so many different responses to fabric paint. Some people love it and it turns out well; others hate it, saying its hard and crunchy. Well I didn't want crunchy curtains....
When I finally did decided on the stencil I wanted I was thinking how much easier it would be if I could just trace it on. It would be so much faster and easier than multiple coats of paint! So I went about googling it and found out about Fabric Markers! They are easy to work with, don't change the texture of the fabric, and you can wash them! I was delighted! And soon went about stenciling my curtains.

I found the template for my stencil here. I just printed it out, traced it on some cardboard, and cut it out, using the cardboard as my template. At first I did just one single stencil, but soon had the idea to do multiple at once...making it a TON faster and easier to keep straight.

Fabric Markers are $2.50 at Joann's. For my 4 curtain panels I used 3 markers.

You will want a large flat surface to work on, I used a large table out in our garage.

Have fun! Here are pictures of the process!

I started in the middle of the curtain, just to make sure it looked even. The main thing you need to worry about is staying straight!! I often took a step back to make sure everything was lined up correctly.  

Like I mentioned above, I first started out with doing a single stencil at a time.

It took awhile, so I soon made another template with multiple. It made the job so much faster and easier! 

I love how they turned out! They add just a touch of character to the room but aren't too overwhelming! And for the price you can't really beat it!