paint chip art

Back in July Jessica Jones of How About Orange posted about using paint chips to make art. There are many versions of paint chip wall art but I liked her geometric triangles the best.

I decided to make one for Michael for Christmas. I grabbed a few paint chips, made a template and started cutting. My triangles looked like they were all the same size but once I started putting them together and found they were not the same size. Close but not exact. It almost looked cool but I knew the imperfections would bug me.

Enter Plan B. I grabbed a 1 1/4" square punch. Punched out a bunch of squares and sliced them in half, corner to corner. Since I only had to make one cut, all the pieces were the exact same size. Whew! The triangles were a different shape then Jessica's but I was okay with that- 'make it your own' and all that. Plus considering the size of the art I was making it was way faster than cutting by hand.

Then came the fun part, making the design. I played around with the triangles until I found a pattern I liked.  I added a second row to check if I liked how the pattern repeated.

Then I prepared my backing paper with some guidelines to keep everything straight. I sprayed the backing paper with spray adhesive and laid out the pattern, keeping the colors completely random.

This part was really quick and it wasn't long before my paper was full!

I put in in a mat and frame I already had and it was done. Michael was really pleased with it and I like that it sort of looks like a mini-quilt.

(uh, just ignore all that crap under the desk. mmm-kay?)