Paint Chip Wall Art

After our relatives left, I really noticed how empty our place seemed.  Although we moved here almost a year ago, I haven't put much effort into making our place more personal.  Chuck's room is the only one that's sort of decorated.

So, I'm going to do my best to add some decorations to the walls.  I'm not too picky, but I do have three requirements for wall art:

1.  It must be bright and happy.
Chuck and I spend quite a bit of time at home.  We need to be surrounded by lovely, happy things.  

2.  It must be removable.
We live in an apartment.  We're not going to live here forever.  I really really don't want to re-paint rooms or fill holes when we leave.

3.  It must be relatively inexpensive.
I'm uber cheap.  One day we'd like to own our own house, so we're slowly saving up.  (Plus, we had a rather traumatic experience with movers breaking stuff, so I worry about expensive art being destroyed.)

Making wall art with paint chips fits all three requirements.  Inspired by A Beautiful Mess's modern paint chip wall art and How About Orange's triangle paint chip art, I thought I'd give paint chips a try.  Here's my result:

Some of the crosses are a bit wonky because of my cutting, but I like the overall result.  Definitely check out the tutorials above to see some lovely examples of paint chip wall art.  Here's how I made mine:

Materials:
- Tons and tons of paint swatches   (Take more than you think you need.  Trust me.)
- Scissors
- Pencil
- Double sided tape
- Frame

Directions:
1.   Steal  Get a ton of paint swatches from your local store. (I went to Walmart super nervous that security guards would escort me out for "stealing" swatches.  I was so worried that I even made up a back story to tell in case anyone questioned why I need 80 swatches.  Yeah, I was kind of a spaz.  You don't need a back story like me.  Just take them.  They're free!)

2.  Cut out your shapes.
Notes:
- This took a looong time.  I cut out my crosses while watching tv.
-  I've seen some people cut out squares or triangles.  I just really love the way quilts with crosses look, so I cut out a ton of crosses.
- I struggled with cutting straight lines.  So, my pieces weren't the exact same shape.  This wasn't a big deal for me because I didn't need the pieces to fit perfectly together. If you hate cutting or want your shapes to perfectly fit, you could always get a paper punch.)

3.  Take out the white back sheet in your frame.  (You know the one I'm talking about.  It says the size of the frame and often shows a picture of strange smiling family or a peaceful nature scene on it.)  Play around with your cutouts and try different designs.

At first I lay everything down randomly.  The end result was... rather tragic.  It looked like a hot rainbow mess.  Plus, I realized that I didn't have enough crosses to cover my whole page.

I really didn't want to go back to Walmart to get more swatches, so I went another route.  I sorted the cutouts by colors and then tried making different random designs.

4.  Once you've settled on a design, stick the cutouts onto your page with double sided tape. Cut off any overhanging pieces and frame.  Voila.   Cheap, personalized, and colorful artwork for your walls.