Watercolor Diamond Wall–DIY

When Anthony first walked into the kids room and saw the diamond accent wall I had just painted hours earlier, his first comment was “Did the kids paint that?”…with a smirk of course because HE KNEW I had an accent wall planned.  I ‘ha ha’ed and showed him my inspiration pic:(Triangle Murals wallpaper from Anewall Decor on Etsy)

And then we had a little discussion on abstract art and how popular it is these days and how that’s awesome for people like me who like to diy stuff like watercolor, diamond accent walls because it totally fits into that category and allows my quick paint job to pass as bonified art and/or maybe wallpaper.  ;)

Bonified art that anyone could do.  Anyone.  With not a lot of time.

(I know, their faces say it all.  Ironically, I snapped these right before I laid them down for their afternoon siesta and apparently the camera aimed at them was a fun distraction from that fact.)

Here’s how:

First, I poured some paint I had leftover from painting the playroom into the Handy Paint Pail, which Handy sent me along with all of the other goodies I used painting the kids room.  I wanted it be a smidge more blue though so I put a little bit of light blue and aqua acrylic paint in it and stirred it all together. 
 
I had no clue how combining latex and acrylic paints was going to go for me but it seemed fine!  I didn’t have any issues with paint bubbling or cracking or anything like that.  On the contrary, I learned a few weeks ago during another project that mixing oil-based paint and acrylic paint with get you a globby mess.  More on that another time.

Once the paint was all mixed up, I added a lot of water to it so I could get that watercolor look I was going for.  The thinner the paint, the more watercolor it will look up on the wall.  I should’ve measured more to be able to give you a better idea but I’ll guess and say I had about a cup of paint and put another 2/3 cup of water into that cup of paint to get a watered down consistency.  If you’re using one-coat coverage paint, you’d probably want to add more water but I was using cheap paint and so that consistency worked great for me.  (P.S.  I had A TON of paint leftover when I was done so if you’re going the accent wall route, you can probably cut my estimates in half, at least.)

I stirred the water/paint mixture really well and got to work.  Because it was so thin and prone to dripping, I made sure to lay down some old sheets to protect the carpet from drips.  Amazingly, I didn’t drip once and I think the whole reason and something that might be key with this technique is this little scraper edge on the Paint Pail that allowed me to dip the brush, and then scrape the excess paint back into the pail. 

So, once I had paint on my brush and the excess scraped off, I free-handed a diamond shape…and another, and another, and another, and another……….


Trust me when I say I wasn’t concerned with making each side exactly the same length or even making sure the points were perfectly horizontal or vertical or even pointed at all.  Imperfection is totally ok with the look I was going for here and that’s why this accent wall is SO EASY!  Anyone can draw a diamond – perfect or a little wonky.  It doesn’t matter.  I did, however, make sure that I held the brush flat against the wall for each side so they were relatively the same width, emphasis on relatively.

Hello little diamond whose left side is slightly higher than its right side:

I also only used the paint on my brush to paint each diamond; I didn’t dip my brush back into the pail if I felt I didn’t have enough paint.  Only using the paint on my brush kept the application thin and contributed to the diamonds being watercolor-ish.

After painting a diamond, I went back over it immediately with my brush turned sideways.  I just quickly made a few quick strokes inside each side to get those watercolor strokes.  It’s really important that you do this right after you paint the diamond while the paint is still wet.

Now you’re all done and ready to move to the next diamond!

I didn’t measure or plan placement of diamonds or anything like that.  I just started in the middle of the wall and worked my way out and toward the edges.  You’ll notice along the edges, I painted some half diamonds to fit inside spaces a whole diamond wouldn’t and to make it look more like it really is wallpaper.
 

There are maybe a few spots I could touch up with the white wall paint where I was a little too loose with my brush but I’m in no rush to do that.  Even still, there’s that option if you feel like your abstract art is maybe a little too abstract…if that’s even possible.  ;)

But really, that’s it!  I painted this diamond accent wall during one nap time last week – within the span of an hour.  I used a paint brush I already had and maybe 1/8 cup of paint + water (a sample jar would be more than enough for this project!), and the Paint Pail (which Handy sent me to use…thank you Handy…I LOVE it!), so this entire project didn’t cost me a thing up front.  Technically though, let’s say you spend $2 on a paintbrush, buy a sample paint pot for $4, and the Paint Pail for $10.  That’s $16 for one heck of an accent wall you can paint with an hour of your time.  Not.  Too.  Shabby. 

So we’ve got diamonds.  I’m so glad I went that route but the other option I had considered for a couple of weeks was watercolor stripes.  I wasn’t planning on taping or anything but just free-handing some stripes.  I’d probably make some tiny marks on the wall so that my lines went straight across but it’d be easy.  The options are endless with imperfect though.  Free-handed triangles, dots (another option I toyed with for awhile), flowers, short lines, etc…

These diamonds aren’t forever #pun since I’ll probably need to paint over them when we leave but I’m okay with that.  Because the paint went on so thin, there won’t be any textured lines to worry about and the white paint will cover in one coat.

Plus, painting over it should give me enough time to think about what our next watercolor accent wall will look like.  :)