Our Paint Chip Family

Ooh, DIY art.  It's my favorite.  And since I'm really, really, really bad/slow at getting real pictures put into real frames, it's really easy too.

So, when I saw the above gallery wall done by Jessica at Pretty Providence, specifically that framed triangle artwork in the upper left, I was inspired.  I got to work one nap time and created my own version of it in the form of a little abstract family portrait, a very abstract family portrait.See?

It's Anthony and I on the left (he's Neutral Gray even though he's anything but neutral and I'm red/orange or "Red Hot" as Behr calls it...ha!), and the kids are two blues and a golden yellow (or boring "Sunwashed Blue", "Honey Beige", and "Harbor").  It's going to have to get tweaked a little bit here in the next few months but since I did this project months ago and am just now getting around to sharing it, we'll stick with five triangles instead of the six we really need now.  The question that now remains is, what color should the new little lady be?  I'm accepting ideas...

The five of us are hanging in the toy corner in the living room; a little area we moved all the toys to last year when we rearranged this room for better functionality.

Want a little triangular fam of your very own?

You know you do!!  Here's how you can birth one...

Grab some paint chips.  I used chips I had on hand from prior projects.  

(Soapbox note:  I don't condone just going into a home improvement store and grabbing paint chips for free for projecting.  I feel like, and maybe this is a little dramatic, but that's almost stealing.  Somebody pays for those and even though they're up for grabs and free for us consumers, I don't think that means going and grabbing a bunch for non-paint related purposes is cool.  However, I do think that going into a home improvement store to buy something and supporting them financially in another way gives you a little more justification to maybe grab a few for a project.  Just my two cents.)

A few of them were squares so I just penciled a line halfway down the middle on the back to create two little triangles.  Then, I used one of those triangles as a template to cut triangles out of the chips that weren't squares.

Then I just cut out the triangles...with my food scissors, yes.  Sometimes they're just the closest and sometimes I'm just lazy.

 

And then I apparently didn't take or lost any and all pictures of how I got them in a frame but luckily, that's Kindergarten-level stuff.  I just grabbed an old frame I had laying around that I had broken the glass to years ago, stuck a piece of white, matte photo paper inside, and glued my triangles in the order I wanted them to the photo paper.  I used photo paper because it's a little thicker than regular computer paper but really, you can use any kind or color of paper you want.  It's your family.  Make it how you want it.  :) 

Along with our family triangle portrait, I hung this print from Hatch Prints (also used in our recent pregnancy announcement) in a thrifted oval frame that I spray painted white and the mat black (they were a nice shade of gaudy pink), and framed picture of the kids I rehabbed from this thrifted frame:

I bought it for the color of the frame but painted the mat white and then went back in and painted in the gray border for flavor.

This little corner of the living room is set now but we've made some major progress in other corners that I can't wait to share with you.  Stay tuned for one rather large update next week!  I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with boo fantel...