Friday, July 22, 2011

How to Paint Vanishing Rainbow Dots

      I know that is not a title that will often get Googled.  My Plaid Wall is actually my most popular post ever, and almost daily, someone googles "How to Paint a Plaid Wall."  I don't think that will happen with this one.  This wall is in our playroom, which we recently painted "Sharkey Gray" from Martha Stewart, though I had it mixed in Behr's Paint and Primer in one.  I love that stuff, and we really love the color - I could see us using it somewhere else sometime.
      I saw a really fun, different rainbow-ish wall in a home tour on Design Sponge and pinned it to Pinterest about 3 months ago, knowing I wanted to do something with it.  Somehow, I came up with making it into dots spaced evenly on a wall, and I just finished it.  Here's the reveal.

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This paint treatment was really quite easy - I mean it this time.  The Plaid Wall really did take a long time, but this one took just a couple of days working very sporadically to finish.  Here's what you need.

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Seven different colors of paint in sample size
A Level
Your Wall Color Paint (Sharkey Gray in our case)
a Pencil
A Circle to trace (I used a lid)
A Paintbrush (I used a craft paint brush, because I knew it would be easy to wash out between colors)

I actually started by figuring out how far apart I wanted my circles to be.  I settled on 1.5 inches apart.  My lid was about 7.5 inches across.  So, I figured that the middle of each dot needed to be 9 inches apart.  This made it simple to put dots every 9 inches in a level row.

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I did 15 dots per row, and 7 different rows of color.  I found a clearish lid that had a center point so that I could see my marks through the lid and trace it.  Then, I traced the lid 105 times.  That actually sounds like a lot more than it felt like.

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Then, I painted the 7 dots in the middle with the colors that I had picked out.  I used a craft paint brush and free-hand painted them.  After I got the hang of it, it went pretty quickly.

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Because I wanted a "vanishing dot effect," I then started diluting the paint with a little bit of gray.  I put some on a paper plate.  With the yellow, I used way too much and ended up having a plate left over.

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By the time I got to the darker orange, I had realized that you don't need very much, especially since I was mixing gray into it.

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I used a paint stirrer to drizzle gray paint into whatever color I was using and mixed it with a paint brush.

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With each dot away from the center, I mixed in a little more gray, so that it seems to blend into the wall more.  Overall, I am really pleased with the way it turned out, and I am very much looking forward to finishing out the playroom!

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9 comments:

Linds said...

ummmm... you are amazing. when we purchase a new home, i might hire you to come and help me :)

Kinzler Family said...

You did it:) It turned out great.

The Lovely One said...

This is genius. Please do this in my son's room!

Anonymous said...

It looks great! I bet is would be fun to search the house for things that matched each dot.

Joeylee said...

it looks great, good job!

April Ciervo said...

you are ridiculously amazing. i wish u lived down the street!!!!!!!!!!!

redrobin said...

I've been looking for the round oversized chair. What store did you purchase it from? Please email me the information to rstevenson4@tx.rr.com.

redrobin said...

I've looking all over for the round oversized chair. Can you email me where you find this chair? My email address is rstevenson4@tx.rr.com.

redrobin said...

I've been looking for the round oversized chair. What store did you purchase it from? Please email me the information to rstevenson4@tx.rr.com.